


Augment

by ccstat



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 50
Words: 160,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23013337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ccstat/pseuds/ccstat
Summary: When the heroes aren’t strong enough to save her from Leviathan, Charlotte triggers as a power-enhancing Trump. Unsurprisingly for Worm, giving people more power doesn’t exactly make things better. For anybody.This story is a post-Leviathan canon divergence that picks up in the middle of Infestation 11.5, from Charlotte’s POV. Given the point of divergence, expect the Slaughterhouse Nine and Echidna to feature prominently in the early arcs. (Also available on SpaceBattles and Sufficient Velocity)
Comments: 37
Kudos: 61





	1. Touch 1.1

Grimy hands clutched at Charlotte’s leg for a moment before the man was hauled back down into the crowd. She cringed away from his touch—or tried to. There was nowhere to move. The discarded store mannequin tangled her bare feet, and shattered glass lay all around. Every direction was filled with clawing hands and leering eyes. The man hadn’t even cared about Charlotte. He had been reaching to paw at the woman beside her, a woman half naked and fully high who had just pulled off her blouse to try on the next piece of clothing someone had thrown at her.

Charlotte’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. It was like watching her zaydee on a bad day, tremors keeping him from holding anything. She pressed her palms flat against each other, but the trembling just got worse, overwhelming every attempt to control herself. She was helpless. Helpless to escape the men who’d snatched her off the street. Helpless to stop the Merchants from bringing her here. Helpless even to keep her body still. Her fingers kneaded themselves into the neck of her sweatshirt.

The worst part was that she could smell it. She hadn’t been able to smell or taste anything for the almost three weeks since Leviathan had, had…. But now there was so much filth and sweat and violence around her that the reek of it actually registered. A mixture of rancid milk and sharp vanilla and overpowering cinnamon. How could anyone stand it? She could feel it permeating the air, feel it sinking into her clothes, her skin. Had that man wiped something on her? Had his hands been smeared with something? She already felt so disgusting, but to smell like these people now, and to know what they wanted from her, the prospect of even closer contact… she barely avoided throwing up. Utterly helpless. The only option was to hide, to be boring. She folded in on herself as much as possible. Don’t make eye contact, don’t be interesting, don’t look at –

Suddenly a man was in front of her. Charlotte flinched away, but he stepped after her and Oh, God, his arms were around her waist! There was a heave and a twist, and then his shoulder was digging into her stomach and she was screaming.

“I’m buying this one,” he hollered.

She didn’t hear the rest because she was too busy flailing and kicking and it wasn’t doing any good, and then he jumped down from the ‘stage’ and all the air went out of her lungs. The mob transformed into a brawl all around them, while she gasped for breath, and then she screamed again. She saw another man pull a knife on the one carrying her, but two girls jumped out of the crowd and attacked him before he could do anything. A few people looked like they might try to take her from her current kidnapper, but most just laughed at her panic. Why, why, why?! Why was this happening? Why were people like this?

When he finally put her down, Charlotte found herself backed up against a wall outside the mall restrooms. The large man was squatting in front of her with his arms crossed, with two nice-smelling teen girls beside him. But beyond those three there were only a few people between the bathrooms and the broken glass doors of a side entrance. If she ran now, she might make it.

Before she even took a step, the blonde girl with the rosemary perfume was already holding up a hand to stop her. “You’re safe,” she said. “We’re not doing anything to you.”

Charlotte wiped her eyes, panting a moment until she had enough breath to say, “But—”

“She’s right,” the man spoke, standing, “You’re as safe as you’re gonna get for the next little while.”

“Oh god,” Charlotte sobbed. Safe. She hadn’t really believed it was possible. No more reaching hands, no more filthy smell. Without even thinking about it she moved forward, ready to give him a hug. He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t thank him. Thank her,” the blonde said, tilting her head at the other girl, the one who smelled like olives. “We wouldn’t have gone out of our way to help if she hadn’t been stubborn.”

With a final sob, Charlotte threw her arms around the other girl, and the world exploded. The olive scent expanded through the city in a wide swath around them, and Charlotte had a brief sense of a texture in the smell, could briefly feel it begin contracting toward them in the center, before the girl shoved her and she was stumbling back into the wall.

“What the hell?” The girl’s shout echoed through the hall, distorted in Charlotte’s ears by a droning buzz. “What was that?”

“What did she do? What did you…” the rosemary blonde demanded, trailing off. “You don’t know. You didn’t know.” She snapped her head around to the one who’d shoved Charlotte. “Taylor, stop! She didn’t know. Still doesn’t. I’m not sure what she does yet, but it’s not harmful, wasn’t an attack. You need to get it together.”

Olive girl, Taylor apparently, was standing absolutely still. The large man beside her had fallen into a fighting stance, staring around at the hallway which was suddenly full of buzzing insects. The drunk teens down the hall were shouting about gross bugs.

“Taylor,” the other girl said, again. “Someone’s going to… _shit!_ ”

She was cut off by a loud crackle erupting from speakers throughout the mall. A string of unintelligible profanity followed, laced with names and orders, but Charlotte wasn’t listening. She’d finally recognized the girl, having heard her name. Taylor. The locker girl. The one who’d been shoved in with all that rank stuff that was eventually carted away in biohazard bags. The one who went so mental they had to have a group of cops and paramedics haul her away. The one Emma Barnes had warned everyone away from. And now she had spiders crawling out of her hair.

And all of Charlotte’s fear came rushing back. She wasn’t safe. The big guy had rescued her from the display window, but he’d done that on the apparent orders of a teenage girl. That wasn’t something that happened. Not unless….

“You’re—” Charlotte couldn’t even complete the thought.

Then the tirade blaring through the sound system finished with an angry scream. “Kill them! Find the Undersiders! Turn Skitter inside out, along with anyone she’s with.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previously posted on SpaceBattles and Sufficient Velocity forums, this story has 30 chapters at the time of initial publication on AO3. Going forward, updates will be synchronized between the various sites. Recently, chapters have been arriving approximately every week, but there is no set update schedule.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	2. Touch 1.2

“Lisa?” asked Taylor in a low voice.

“Damn, this is bad. Okay, your bugs are active throughout the mall, so they don’t know where we are. We can leave now with Minor and Senegal, and Brooks and Jaw can make their own way back.”

“I meant her,” said Taylor.

“She has to come with. She recognized you from somewhere. From school. Yeah, she knows exactly who you are. Don’t know what else is going on with her yet, but that’s important too. Definitely can’t leave her behind.”

“I, I, I won’t say anything!” Charlotte stumbled away along the wall. “I didn’t see anything!” But she already knew it was no use. Everyone had seen what the Empire capes did when they were outed. Reporters dismembered on live TV, residential blocks flattened, attacks on police and PRT and civilians, none of whom had anything to do with the leak. And here, right in front of her, was a supervillain whose identity she knew. A supervillain who had reason to hate everyone from Winslow, a girl who was staring her down with cold, emotionless eyes. Charlotte wiped tears from her cheeks and whimpered a pathetic “Please don’t kill me.”

“I’m not going to—" Taylor started, then cut herself off. “We’ll deal with this somewhere else. Minor, take her to the shelter.”

The man who’d carried her here, Minor apparently, put a heavy hand on her shoulder but looked to Lisa for confirmation. Her stomach somehow dropped even further. _Two_ supervillains outed in front of her. Charlotte didn’t know who this other cape was, but the man was clearly her minion.

“Taylor, don’t be an idiot,” Lisa cut in. “We can’t stay.”

“I promised to find him. I can’t fail my people.”

“Taylor….”

“This isn’t hard. I’ve already got bug clones focusing their attention on the northwest corner of the building. I’ll engage briefly, lead them off, then we can stick around and finish our errand.”

Charlotte realized she was hyperventilating again. How was it possible to go from frying pan to fire so quickly, yet have no idea it was happening?

Lisa glared at Taylor. “It’s a terrible idea. They’ll be paying attention now. Our group can’t pass for Merchants with the kind of paranoia you just kicked off. Hundreds of people who have never seen the Undersiders will be looking for anyone with a vaguely similar body type. And guess what? Skitter, Bitch, Grue, Regent, and Tattletale give a fairly wide range of choices. We are about two minutes away from a witch hunt. Depending on how well your ‘lead them off’ plan works, that will turn into either a full-on riot or a series of executions. We do _not_ want to be here when that happens.”

Taylor didn’t answer for a moment, and Charlotte looked up at Minor. He was looking back down the hall at a short man running up to them. The newcomer waited for Lisa’s nod to approach.

“Found the kid. Jaws is with him, or was when I left. I was halfway back when the bugs started going crazy.”

Taylor started to say something, but Lisa hurried to speak over her. “Good work, Brooks. Go back and get him out of the building. Head south. We’re leaving this way and will find you outside. Was he alone? Not alone. Guarded? No, don’t tell me, doesn’t matter. I’ll contact Skitter and get her to cause enough chaos that nobody will get in your way. And if they’ve moved from where you left them, Skitter can use bugs to guide you to Jaws. Take Senegal with you. Go.”

“Understood,” said Brooks, and jogged back the way he’d come. At the end of the hallway he gestured to a man Charlotte hadn’t noticed, and the two of them disappeared.

Lisa turned back and met Taylor’s glare. “If we could cut our rescuee loose, maybe we all could have stuck together and made your plan work. I wouldn’t have recommended it, but maybe. With knows-your-face here, it’s way more important that we get out fast. This extraction mission just acquired a second target.”

Charlotte flinched again as Taylor looked at her, but with Minor holding her in place she couldn’t even cringe.

“Fine,” said Taylor. “We’ll leave.” And with that the four of them were moving towards the doors. Lisa and Taylor were in front, with Minor pulling Charlotte behind them. Not that she was trying to resist, she just had shorter legs than the other three. It wouldn’t have mattered if she _were_ resisting, though. Everything was out of her control. Again. Just like cowering on the “stage” that Minor had rescued her from. Just like collapsing in the back of the van after the Merchants had grabbed her. Just like drowning in …

Taylor stopped dead and Charlotte would have walked right into her without Minor pulling her to a halt. She heard a faint rumbling, followed by screams.

“That was Fault—” Lisa began, but was interrupted by Taylor’s shout.

“Back! Move!”

And then the doors were engulfed in towering flames, a wall of heat forcing them away.

When Charlotte was finally able to tear her attention away from the crackling fire, they were nearly at the other end of the hallway. Taylor ( _Skitter!_ ) was gesturing at the empty air as though there were some diagram they all should be able to see.

“… and Gregor, that’s four. Spitfire’s headed for a fifth. The main exit on the West side hasn’t been blocked yet, but something weird is happening over there.”

“Weird means Labyrinth,” responded Lisa. “Odd choice for where to place her, and the move on the doors was sloppy. They’re rushing. This was a planned op but they’re rushing, something made them jump the gun. The bugs. They think they’ve got competition. Why? They don’t take local jobs unless…. Who would hire them to hit the Merchants? Not the boss. Not the heroes. The Chosen or the Pure would do it themselves. Someone out of town? But…”

“Lisa, work it out later. We’re heading to the stairs.”

And then they were out of the hallway and pushing their way through milling, shouting people until they reached a broken escalator leading up to the second floor. Minor pushed Charlotte in front of him, and it wasn’t until he bodily lifted her over a gap that she realized the escalator was not just broken in the sense of not moving, but was missing several steps, revealing the mechanism inside. She had to hop twice more before they reached the top and were able to look out on the chaos below.

Charlotte would have called it violent chaos, except that Lisa had already said the words _riot_ and _executions_ , and it was obvious that however bad it was now, it could get much worse. So far it was just shoving and shouting and slugging and screaming and, oh God, that woman just stabbed someone! Charlotte whimpered and stepped back from the railing.

They weren’t entirely alone on the upper level, but it was far, far less crowded than the main floor. The small groups that eyed them backed off from Minor’s menacing bulk and went to harass individuals and other obviously weak targets. That couldn’t last, though. Was there somewhere to hide? Would it actually be safer inside one of the abandoned stores, or would that isolation invite active predators? Charlotte stepped behind a concrete pillar, hopefully breaking line of sight. The fewer people who knew she was there, the fewer would try to target her. Not that it would make much difference when she had the direct attention of two honest-to-God supervillains _who she had seen unmasked!_ And yet they (and their minions) were the only thing standing in between Charlotte and the heaving violence downstairs, the only reason she wasn’t still being groped in that display window. When did “kidnapped by hostile supervillains” become the lesser evil?

“…is with Brooks, but they can’t get through to join us,” Taylor was saying. “Faultline is battling Trainwreck and Whirligig in the middle, and Spitfire is about to engage Mush. I’m directing Senegal towards a safe-ish spot in the back of PayLess.”

Lisa nodded. “That’s probably for the best. You’re already outed to Minor and skinny, but the fewer people that see you as Skitter the better, even among my guys.”

Skinny? Who was…? Oh. Well, that was rude. What was Lisa’s problem, anyway? Charlotte hadn’t had any chance for “tall and thin” genes from either side of her family. She’d actually lost quite a bit of weight after… well, in the last couple weeks. Food was in short supply, and since she couldn’t taste it anyway, she hadn’t had much of an appetite. Plus all the walking between shelters when they were looking for a place to stay, and… wait, why was she thinking about this _now_? Stuck in the middle of a cape fight with enough violent gang members to fill three hockey stadiums, and she was letting body image insecurities take over her brain?

Charlotte looked up to glare at Lisa, only to catch a face full of smug. “Back with us?” she asked. “You were close to passing out there.” The girl’s smirk was insufferable. But maybe she had a point. Charlotte’s indignation had displaced some of her fear, and she wasn’t hyperventilating any more. Well, as much. Oh, God, she’d just glared at a supervillain!

“Yeah, we’re scary, I get that.” Lisa didn’t sound sympathetic at all. “But Taylor here has a bit of a hero complex and was trying to save you, not kidnap you. Yeah, we’ve got things to work out, but if we do end up threatening your life and family to enforce your silence, that will happen after we get out of the current delightful mess. Congrats, skinny! You have at least thirty minutes worry free, provided you stick close. Carrying your butt out isn’t going to be an option, though, so we need you functional. Can you handle that?”

Charlotte blinked a few times, trying to process that. Cooperate so we can threaten you later? What kind of reassurance was that?

“The sincere kind,” said Lisa, “now snap out of it. We need to move.”

Charlotte swallowed nervously and nodded. Had Lisa read her mind or something? Standing, she followed after Taylor who was leading them quickly past a games store and into a Macy’s. Lisa kept pace beside her, with Minor bringing up the rear. Taylor wove between downed clothing racks on her way to the far wall, ducking into a small stockroom lined with boxed kitchenware. She ripped open a cheese knife set, pulling out what looked like a vicious bladed fork or maybe a two-pronged knife.

“Here,” she ordered Charlotte, pointing at the shelf. “Start opening these.” When Charlotte complied, Taylor stepped further along the shelves, rustling through other items. “We’re out of sight here for a few minutes, but we need to keep mobile. Right now we’re as far as we can get from the fires and from Labyrinth’s creation without trapping ourselves.”

“What can you tell me, Taylor? I need data points.”

“Fight’s moving around. Mush is down, but Spitfire took a nasty hit and pulled back to help Gregor guard Labyrinth. Trainwreck is trying to break through some walls to what I think is one of Squealer’s tanks, but Faultline’s doing a good job of getting in his way.”

While Charlotte worked she tried to get a grip on herself, slowing her breathing. Growing up Jewish in Brockton Bay had given her plenty of experiences dealing with peril in various forms, but her instincts were hyper-tuned to avoiding problems with the Empire. Being slandered for her _weight_ of all things had seriously subverted her expectations of what provocation looked like. The city was different now, though, and she’d been snatched by the Merchants in what should have been a decently safe area. Then she’d been rescued, which was wonderful even with the fact that Taylor had turned out to be a villain. An absolute positive if she ignored the whole identity issue. What she needed was a plan. Which started with step one: don’t make the villains mad at you, followed by step two: find out what is going on and hope for options.

Step one meant following directions, which she was already doing by unpackaging sharp things and handing them off to Taylor, who was back now and tying threads around the knives and mini carving forks as fast as Charlotte could get them out of the boxes. Step two meant tuning back in to whatever Taylor had been saying about the brawl going on downstairs.

“… new Merchant capes are spreading through the mall following my decoys. One each brute, blaster, mover. Only the mover is giving me any trouble, and I’m pretty sure he’s high enough on something that it won’t be an issue. I’m trying to strand them from each other, which is more or less…”

A loud swarm of hornets and dragonflies shot down in front of Charlotte’s face, breaking her focus. She shrieked and started to apologize for listening, but the bugs weren’t actually attacking her. Instead, each one took hold of a thread and the swarm airlifted the knives out of the stockroom in waves of yellow and black.

“… non-capes fighting each other at random, but there’s a concerted push on the east side that looks like an organized search—possibly for us, possibly for Labyrinth since they are getting closer to her.”

“This doesn’t make sense! It’s not a hit or an extraction, their deployment is wrong for that. Even if they’re rushed, Newter’s their best asset for that and wouldn’t be tasked to harass Skidmark. And for anything else I’d expect him and Gregor to switch, have Newter guard Labyrinth. Augh! I need to _see_ what’s happening.”

Taylor had finished prepping the forks for her bugs, and had torn open a bag of cotton swabs, all of which disappeared as hundreds of bugs swarmed in to carry them off.

“We’re done here, let’s get somewhere with multiple exits.” With that, Taylor led the way back into the store proper, jogging past a set of stairs to crouch behind what must have been a jewelry counter before it was looted. Glass from the shattered display case littered the floor.

“Wait,” said Lisa when she caught up. “Where was Squealer?”

“Hiding under the stage for now. Bunch of boxes and shipping crates down there, drugs or money I expect. Maybe commodities to barter, but that doesn’t sound like the Merchants to me.”

“What about…” Lisa asked,

[DESTINATION]

…and then suddenly Charlotte was picking herself up off the floor, feeling dizzy.

Taylor was rolling to her feet as well, looking disoriented but searching their surroundings.

Lisa was mumbling to herself. “Like parasites and gods, but they don’t…”

“W-What just happened?” Charlotte asked.

It was Minor who answered. “All three of you collapsed at the same time. You were out for maybe four seconds.”

“…babies and viruses all at the same time.”

Charlotte ignored Lisa’s delirium, focusing on keeping herself balanced. She didn’t want to fall over again.

“It wasn’t just us,” said Taylor. “All the capes in the building keeled over at the same time.”

All the capes? But it had affected her too, so it must have also caught some other people as well. Why would …? Before she could really finish the thought, shouts and screams from the center of the mall suddenly renewed in intensity.

Taylor flinched. “Trigger event. Someone just got a blaster power, and it’s out of control. Shit, this isn’t good.”

“Trigger?” asked Lisa. “That’s it! I’m almost there. It’s like it’s at the tip of my tongue, but it’s my brain, not my tongue.” She trailed off again into incoherent mumbling.

Taylor spared a glance for Charlotte. “Stay and help Lisa for a minute. Minor, you’re with me. We have incoming.” She pulled out a baton from somewhere, flicking it open before jogging off toward the front of the store with Minor in her wake.

Charlotte looked down at Lisa, who had her eyes scrunched tight and was mouthing words to herself. She must be even dizzier from that fall. Not knowing what else to do except help her stand, Charlotte reached down and took hold of one of Lisa’s hands.

Lisa’s eyes shot open and her rosemary perfume billowed out to suffuse the area around them. The rich, clean smell was so strong she could practically _hear_ it. Charlotte made to let go, but Lisa’s hand had clamped down on her fingers and didn’t let her.

“Two of them,” she whispered, staring into Charlotte’s face without seeing her. “Immense. Pieces, no, _fragments_ , reaching through into our brains. OW!” She yanked her hands up to rub her forehead, but didn’t lessen her grip on Charlotte’s hand, which resulted in a second cry of pain when Charlotte’s thumb jabbed her eye.

“Ouch!” Finally seeming to wake up fully, Lisa focused on Charlotte’s face. “Dammit, that’s like being handed the key to Solomon’s mine and being told you can take anything you can carry.” One by one her fingers unclenched, slowly releasing Charlotte. “If I don’t stop now I’ll have a headache so bad I won’t be able to think for days. If there wasn’t a cape fight going on I’d probably still risk it anyway. Girl, you are like the living embodiment of a monkey’s paw. Now back away and don’t let me touch you until tomorrow.”

Charlotte obeyed, feeling utterly bewildered and more than happy to keep her distance. “Are you… okay?” she tried.

Lisa waved her off. “Fine, fine. Shit, this is huge. I can’t believe I told Taylor not to grab you. That would have been my worst mistake in a year. The problem now is how to keep you secret, where to hide you.”

Yeah, that wasn’t ominous at all. This was sounding less like a rescue with every word. She was going to need a step three to her plan sooner rather than later. Charlotte tried to work up her courage to say something or ask a question, but the words seemed to slip back down her throat before they’d made it halfway out. She just watched as Lisa stood and started pacing, muttering to herself too quietly to overhear.

An immense crash interrupted their thoughts, and a swirl of insects formed into arrows pointing out of the store. Lisa followed them immediately, and after a moment of hesitation Charlotte trailed after her. Hiding in the store wasn’t really viable, especially if the fires in the mall were spreading. And it wasn’t as if she could actually hide from Taylor or Lisa. Besides, she was still working on step “don’t antagonize the supervillains” and didn’t see any reason to deviate from her intricate plan.

Taylor and Minor were crouched near a trio of elevators, or rather elevator _shafts_ as the doors and cars seemed to be missing or badly damaged. They were surrounded by a dozen prone bodies, all apparently unconscious except for two that were groaning and cradling broken limbs. There were spiders and cockroaches crawling out of several of their mouths, swarming across arms and faces. Charlotte decided that not antagonizing Taylor had absolutely been the right decision.

“What’s our status?” Lisa asked.

“Better than it could be,” Taylor answered, “but this could go any of three ways from here, and we need to make some decisions soon. Half the capes are down on both sides, and they still don’t know where we are. Do we fight to win this or just to disengage and get our people home? And how much do we trust Faultline? Are we helping or opposing her team?”

Lisa snorted. “I know you aren’t actually asking for advice. You’ve already decided how you want to play this, and you just want permission to use my guys. Well, I appreciate the courtesy. I’m guessing you think you can probably win, but it risks putting all of us in the middle of the action, right? To me, that means there are two questions to answer. First, will what we win be worth that risk? Second, can you convince Faultline we’re not their enemy? Both answers depend on figuring out what Faultline is after and how it affects us. They rushed their operation because they thought our presence here endangered their objective. It’s not enough to just not attack them, we have to make sure they know we’re not stealing their payday. And to answer either question you have to talk to them, which means going down there without armor or costume. Is that a risk you want to run? If you do that, you might not make it out with Bryce, which you’ve been pretty adamant is the real purpose behind this excursion, despite the way you keep insisting on these side missions. I want to tell you no, but rescuing skinny turned out to be our biggest success since Lung, so if you decide the goal tonight is to take down the merchant leadership on a whim, then fine. I’m behind you. But make sure it’s really what you want to do, because this is not going to be a walk in the park.”

“What do you mean, ‘biggest success since Lung?’” Taylor asked.

“Tell you later, but short version is she’s a Trump, and a strong one. Even if her diet wasn’t working she’d be worth her weight in the precious metal of your choice. She could make everything we’re working on possible.”

Taylor shot Charlotte a sharp look. “And by everything…”

“Yeah, that,” Lisa agreed. “So make absolutely sure that whatever risks you decide to run right now don’t include losing her.”

Taylor stared at them for a moment, obviously debating with herself, until a huge explosion downstairs temporarily drowned out the shouts and gunfire. Charlotte winced away from the sound and tried to make herself as small as possible, but Taylor didn’t react beyond making up her mind. With a decisive nod she said, “We’re doing this.”


	3. Touch 1.3

If someone had asked Charlotte before tonight what she imagined herself doing in a cape fight, hiding out of sight would have been the obvious answer. So, broadly speaking, she was fulfilling expectations. She just had to ignore the fact that hiding in this case meant clinging to the maintenance ladder inside a dark elevator shaft, and that she was hiding while she waited for an opportunity to get _closer_ to the violence, not away from it. While she was at it, maybe she should ignore the exhaustion in her arms, the empty churning in her stomach, the deafening gunfire from basically everywhere, and the pervasive scents of rosemary and olive that told her she was within arm’s reach of two supervillains who had apparently claimed her as a stolen valuable. Yeah, trying to ignore things didn’t work.

Like the fact that they were convinced she was a cape, but somehow hadn’t known about her powers until villains told her about them, after rescuing her from a gang. Which was weird enough on its own, but this was Brockton Bay. The whole rescued-by-villains-from-worse-villains thing really shouldn’t surprise her that much. But powers? Her? Well, since apparently her power amounted to smelling weird things when capes touched her, it isn’t like she would have noticed before now, unless there was a parahuman hiding in the shelter or synagogue. Not likely. Although, technically Charlotte qualified, so there might be others. How new were her powers anyway? Tonight with the Merchants had been horrifying enough to maybe qualify as a trigger event, but she didn’t really know anything about those except that they were supposed to be traumatic, near-death experiences. There were plenty of those to go around. How did you tell if you didn’t suddenly start flying or shooting lasers out of your eyes? Were there a lot of parahumans who didn’t realize they had powers? If she’d just gotten them tonight, then it hadn’t really taken her long to notice, but Charlotte had a sinking suspicion that the smells her supposed power gave her were tied to her inability to smell anything else, in which case she’d have had her power since… well, since three weeks ago when….

Okay, so she could think of another traumatic moment that might have been a trigger event. But that just meant she was oblivious and didn’t notice her do-nothing power until villains decided they wanted her for it. For some reason.

“Get ready.” Lisa’s comment broke her from her thoughts, and she looked around to realize that Taylor was no longer with them. Neither was Minor.

“Okay. Um… Lisa? If I’m really a cape, shouldn’t I put on a mask or something before we go out there?”

Lisa laughed softly. “Oh, you’re a cape, honey. Don’t doubt that. But no, advertising that with a mask would just draw a target on your back right now. As long as we can look like two normal girls we’ll be a lot more likely to get overlooked by the angry mob out there. I’ll give you a mask before we talk to Faultline.”

“Oh.”

A flash of fireflies startled her, and her grip on the rungs almost failed.

“That’s the signal,” said Lisa. “Follow me.”

Charlotte clambered out of the elevator shaft. It surprised her a little, how easy that was. She would never have had the courage to try it in other circumstances, since her agility was not really up to the task of maneuvering sideways with intermittent handholds, but with so much else to worry about she didn’t have room for fears of falling and just did it.

The mall was still full of people, which made sense if all the exits had been blocked. Most of them seemed preoccupied brawling with whoever was closest. That part made zero sense. If these were all Merchants, why were they fighting each other? In one direction Charlotte could see a cyclone of debris spinning above the heads of the crowd. Fortunately, the little trail of fireflies that Lisa was following led them through an improbable corridor of calm. Well, not calm. More like apathy or inattention. Whatever the cause, the two of them were able to wend their way between several fights without drawing attention to themselves, finally catching up to Taylor and Minor inside a thoroughly trashed Bed, Bath & Beyond. Apparently they’d stopped here because of the stone wall cutting off the hallway, looking like it had been dropped straight out of a dungeon, complete with torches in wall sconces and creepy crawlies on the wall. Though, on second thought, the latter were probably attributable to Taylor. A dozen other dim figures cowered inside the storefront, so when Lisa spoke it was in a barely audible whisper.

“Status?”

“Not great,” Taylor answered. “Squealer made it into her tank. I’ll tell you the rest as we go, but we need to get to Faultline quickly. She’s still fighting Trainwreck.”

Taylor led them through a low stone archway in the strange wall, immediately turning left then right as branching passages split off in multiple directions. As soon as she stepped across the threshold, Charlotte’s senses were inundated with the scent of fresh rain. It was relaxing, somehow. Looking down, Charlotte saw that the floor was packed earth rather than the concrete or tile she’d expected.

“This isn’t the most direct route,” Taylor explained, taking another turn, “but it is probably the fastest since it lets us avoid several large groups of fighters that would bog us down. This maze is pretty consistent with fifteen-foot walls in most places, and it’s slowly expanding to fill the rest of the mall in a rough circle around Labyrinth. It’s mostly stable, though the paths shift occasionally. No traps or dangers that I can tell.”

Lisa nodded. “Gregor and Spitfire still protecting her?”

“Yes, and Faultline’s new member is facing off with Whirligig. Some kind of combat thinker, I’m guessing, from how she moves. Not sure how that matchup will go, but my money is on Whirligig if this lasts much longer. Especially since she has Squealer as backup. My bugs haven’t been able to get through her telekinetic field to help. Newter is down, injured.”

“Trainwreck?”

“No, Skidmark. Looks like he fell into his own field when the trigger event knocked him out, and it launched him into Newter, so he’s out for the count. Newter is unconscious and bleeding quite a bit, but not enough to make me concerned.”

“Bleeding? Oh, so that’s what you’ve been doing,” said Lisa. “Normals too, or just capes? How many are left?” Charlotte thought she’d been understanding things okay, but then Lisa went and skipped whole swathes of conversation and left her in the dust again. Charlotte felt her glare renewing as they jogged past a few individuals slumped against the wall. They looked pretty beaten up.

“Normals too,” Taylor answered. “Basically everyone in easy distance from Newter so far. My bugs can’t shuttle his blood that quickly, and even though it only takes a tiny bit, it’s not feasible for huge numbers of people. I’d guess I’ll top out at 600. That’s still just a fraction of who’s here. I did dose the new trigger and the Merchant’s brute and blaster, so we don’t have to deal with them. Their new mover is too fast, so far. Teleporter, haven’t figured out the quirk yet. Not line of sight. Haven’t gotten to Mush yet, but he’s still down with burns from Spitfire, so we’ve got time.”

“So it’s us, Faultline, and her thinker against Trainwreck, Whirligig, a teleporter, and Squealer in a tank?”

“Exactl—DOWN!”

Charlotte threw herself on the ground and covered her head as pieces of stone blasted against her back. Looking up, she saw that both walls of their hallway now sported gaping holes about ten feet away from where they crouched.

“Looks like the tank is weapons hot,” observed Taylor. “Gave us a shortcut to Faultline, though. If you’re coming with, you’ll want to mask up.”

Charlotte couldn’t stop herself from shuddering as she watched a black carpet of insects flood up Taylor’s body, transforming her into a nightmare. This was no longer Taylor, but Skitter. She didn’t really think she’d needed a reminder that these girls were villains, but this definitely focused that idea in her mind. Especially when another mass of insects waterfalled out of the sky to cover Skitter again, and she split into three different writhing humanoid figures, each of which passed through the hole in the wall. Oh, God, that was horrible! She’d never think of the plagues in Egypt the same way again. How on earth had Pharoah changed his mind after experiencing something like that?

Lisa cleared her throat to catch Charlotte’s attention, then handed her a piece of cloth to wrap around her face like a bandanna. A domino mask was now covering Lisa’s freckles, but did absolutely nothing to hide her infuriating smirk. “Stick with Minor and you’ll be fine. If you somehow do get separated from us, follow the bugs.”

Charlotte nodded and turned to step back by Minor, but he wasn’t there. She made a full circle looking for Lisa’s minion before catching sight of him waiting for her by the hole through the wall. As soon as she had seen him he moved through it and she was forced to follow him. Moving closer to a tinker tank was a horrible idea, but the thought of being alone in the middle of the Merchant free-for-all they had navigated to get here was even worse. Villain or no, Skitter had saved her more than once tonight, and she was still Charlotte’s best hope of getting out in one piece. Plus, the idea of pissing off the walking plague by going against whatever plan was in place was one she wouldn’t even begin to entertain. Better to be blasted to pieces in a single shot than devoured by ten million insects.

When the tank’s gun sounded again with another crash of obliterated stone, Charlotte started questioning her decision. Was there a way out of this that didn’t leave her at Skitter’s mercy?

Trailing behind Minor, who had already followed Lisa through two more broken walls, Charlotte found herself entering what looked like Roman ruins. The shattered remains of a fountain lay in the center of a wide plaza about double the size of Winslow’s lunchroom. The plaza was dotted with thick stone columns, only about a third of which were still standing. Even as she took this in, another of the columns toppled under a blow from the enormous metal robot fighting on the far side of the open space. Charlotte quickly joined Minor where he crouched behind a fallen pillar, then peeked out over the top. The robot’s opponent, a woman wearing a welding mask and body armor, ducked under another punch and struck out with one hand to lay a palm against one of its knuckles, which promptly sheared and split. A platter-size hunk of iron fell to the floor, but Charlotte didn’t hear it hit the ground, as the expected clang was drowned out by the din of clanking metal and crashing stone. The woman’s long ponytail swung around her as she pivoted to close the distance and tried to touch the robot’s knee. The thing was too fast, though, and caught her in the ribs with a glancing kick, forcing her to roll away. She came to her feet again and backpedaled directly through one of the fallen pillars. What? Did she have a phasing ability, too? The robot moved to follow but was pre-empted by the appearance of a mass of bugs that boiled up between the two fighters and assembled into a humanoid silhouette.

“Skitter!” The angry shout that came from the robot was surprisingly human. Was it actually a mech someone was piloting? It was far larger than the power armor most tinkers built for themselves. Charlotte knew the Empire’s capes backwards and forwards, naturally, and could recognize the local heroes, but she hadn’t paid much attention to the Merchants before this.

The bug clone ignored the robot/mech thing and instead spoke to the woman in a clicking rasp that made Charlotte’s skin crawl.

_“Faultline. Do you require assistance?”_

A metal hand smashed down and scattered the bugs, which promptly swarmed to both sides and formed two new bug clones. The robot responded immediately with a kick that obliterated one of them, but two more clones formed in its place as more insects streamed into the room from all directions.

“That depends,” answered Faultline. “What business do the Undersiders have here?”

 _“None that would interfere with yours, I trust. We had an errand of a personal nature, retrieving certain individuals who had been taken by the Merchants. The current excitement is unintentioned, but--”_ Skitter’s oddly formal speech was interrupted when the speaking bug clone was dispersed by a massive pillar thrown through the space it occupied, only for another to immediately pick up the conversation while the scattered insects reformed into yet more humanoid shapes. _“--we are using this opportunity to take down as many of the Merchant capes as prove unable to defend themselves. So far, that’s three of them, plus the two your people have handled.”_

“If that is true, and you don’t try to hinder our objective, then we have no conflict,” said Faultline. “I will accept an alliance for the evening.”

_“Excellent. We’ll start with Trainwreck then.”_

Whatever the bug clone said next was lost to Charlotte’s hearing as all the other insects in the plaza burst into motion with a droning of wings and clacking of legs that sent them spiraling around the mech so densely that she lost sight of it completely.

That only lasted a moment before a loud whistle accompanied twin streams of superheated steam that shot from its hands, flash boiling huge portions of the swarm as the thing, Trainwreck apparently, spun in place with one hand aimed high and the other pointed toward the ground. That earned it an empty space to move in, but instead of advancing, it then turned the sprays of steam on itself, killing and ejecting a writhing mass of insects that had entered between joints to attack the internal mechanisms, or perhaps the pilot if there was one.

During this brief lull, Charlotte saw eight knives drop from the cloud of insects overhead. Most of them glanced off the armor, but two were aimed well enough to lodge between moving parts on its back, and one of those double pronged cheese knives stabbed into a pressurized line resulting in a spray of some sort of fluid that quickly dribbled to nothing. A grinding sound followed, and Trainwreck’s left arm immediately slowed, binding and jerking when moved.

Trainwreck roared, and with a quick _fwoosh_ six jets of flame ignited from different joints: knees, elbows, and both sides of the neck. The insects that had gotten close again were incinerated, and the bulk of the swarm fell back to one side. Trainwreck followed at a run, kicking aside fallen pillars and shouldering past another. The swarm tried to evade, but Trainwreck lurched to the side, splaying arms and legs to catch as many as possible in the roaring flames. Which is when both of Faultline’s hands emerged from inside a stone pillar and latched onto the mech’s torso, shearing the chest and back plate in two. Before Trainwreck could retreat or strike back at her, she grabbed the main shaft of the left leg and her power broke it down the middle.

Trainwreck collapsed, flailing enough to force Faultline back. A bug clone formed beside the two of them and spoke, but Charlotte was distracted by a tap on her shoulder. Minor tipped his head to one side, where Lisa was beckoning from another hallway. Belatedly, Charlotte realized that there were cockroaches in an arrow formation right in front of her face, pointing her that direction.

They crossed the plaza at a jog, and were nearly to the hallway when another deafening blast and shower of concrete reminded Charlotte that there was still a Tinker tank nearby with the power to knock holes through multiple stone walls. And it was apparently gunning for them, because a second hole quickly opened up beside the first.

The next moment, a tall redhead in a green mask dove through the wall beside the hole, narrowly avoiding a spray of gunfire that managed to punch through in a few places. She sprinted for Faultline, then suddenly stopped and brought a shotgun up to her shoulder and firing. Just as she pulled the trigger a scruffy man appeared a few steps in front of Faultline swinging a fireaxe. The slug from the shotgun ricocheted upward off the axe head, forcing the man to drop his weapon with a cry of pain. He took a step back and disappeared again. A few seconds later he reappeared beside Trainwreck, then both of them vanished.

“Thank you, Shamrock,” said Faultline. “Good work.”

Shamrock started to say something, but Lisa’s shout interrupted her.

“Yes, very lucky timing. Enough congratulating each other already! Squealer’s on the way so let’s move!”

Everyone started to run towards Lisa, and Charlotte didn’t want to second guess them. She reached Lisa and Minor only a few steps later, Faultline and Shamrock skidding to a stop behind her, having run much faster than Charlotte could manage. It was a good thing too, because several booms announced more high speed projectiles doing more damage to the plaza.

Charlotte glanced around for Skitter. She wasn’t present, but there were still bugs everywhere, so she was obviously still around somewhere. To make sure she wasn’t accidentally staring, Charlotte carefully dropped her eyes to the floor when she looked toward Faultline and Shamrock. In doing so she noticed that both women’s feet were sunk oddly into the floor, as if they were standing an inch and a half lower than everyone else. Did they both have phasing abilities then? Or was the maze illusory somehow? This was impossible. How did capes decide which details mattered and which to write off as more of the weirdness that always accompanied powers?

Faultline gave Lisa a cold nod. “Tattletale.” Well, that officially completed Lisa being outed to her, but at least she had something to call the girl while in costume.

Tattletale smirked, as was apparently her norm, and gestured down the hall. “After you.”

Faultline waved Shamrock ahead of her, then moved to follow. Charlotte wrinkled her nose at the smell of used exercise equipment that wafted off of Shamrock, but tried to stifle that reaction. As Faultline swept past with a hint of grapefruit, she gave Charlotte a curious glance. “New Undersider?”

“Yep!” said Tattletale.

“No,” said Charlotte at the same time.

“Well, it’s heading that direction,” corrected Tattletale quickly as Faultline’s head swung around. “Skinny here is still independent, but she owes us some favors and I’m calling this a trial run.”

“Interesting,” said Faultline, appraising Charlotte a bit more closely. “Well, remember that you have more options than putting up with insolent Thinkers. If you are feeling pressured, or if you just want to talk about other opportunities, contact me at the Palanquin. It’s still intact, for the most part.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Charlotte said, shrinking into herself when she saw Tattletale’s face momentarily twitch into a scowl.

Reverting to a smile again, Lisa addressed Faultline. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t poach any more of our recruits, Miss F.”

“It’s not poaching to give them a refuge from the capital B bitch on your team,” responded Faultline easily. “Or from the girl with attack dogs.”

Tattletale’s growl at that remark made Charlotte even more nervous, beyond the continued sound of the tank firing behind them. Faultline just chuckled. “But we’re _friends_ tonight, so I’ll wait to sabotage your recruitment pitch until another time.” She turned to Charlotte. “You’ve met some quality people in the Undersiders who excel at…”

“No backhanded compliments, thanks,” interrupted Tattletale. “What’s the plan?”

“Gregor and Shamrock will…”

“Not asking you,” Tattletale interrupted again, this time with a self-satisfied grin. “Skitter?”

The rasping click of a thousand insects emerged from a writhing mass on the ceiling. “ _First priority is stopping that tank. It has decisive control of the center of the mall, and we probably aren’t going to be able to pull Newter out of there without dealing with it._ ”

“Thank you for thinking of my people,” Faultline said to the ceiling, having completely turned her back on Tattletale. “Our objective is also in that room, so I agree that any plan has to involve disabling the tank.”

The scent of olives warned Charlotte just in time to keep from jumping out of her skin as Skitter spoke from right behind her. “Fortunately, Skidmark is tangled up with Newter so Squealer hasn’t tried to run him over yet. A lot of the injured merchants are in danger of being crushed, though, and she hasn’t made any effort to avoid them so far.”

Faultline didn’t seem bothered by that. “Sounds like we can bring out the big guns then, without hurting them any worse than they’re already hurting themselves.”

Charlotte glanced behind her. Taylor was still obscured by a thick covering of her insects, but had thankfully spoken in her human voice. How had she gotten so close to Charlotte so quietly? It made the villain even more frightening. Or maybe Charlotte was just too distracted to notice anything happening around her? That was actually worse now that she thought about it, since it would mean _everyone_ else was more dangerous to her.

“Unless you object,” Taylor continued, “I will send Tattletale and the new girl to rendezvous with Labyrinth and some of our nonpowered employees. They’ll protect her and Spitfire so Gregor can join the three of us in the attack.” When Faultline nodded, she turned to Minor. “When you get there, send Senegal and Jaw back with Gregor. Then have Brooks do what he can to treat Spitfire and anyone else with injuries.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. 

A line of fireflies illuminated a path toward a side passage, and Charlotte followed Minor while Lisa took the rear. Behind them, the others were beginning a discussion of tactics. Charlotte didn’t spare any attention for that, simply grateful to finally be moving away from Squealer and what had apparently become the deadliest area of this insane riot.

A sudden putrid stench welled up from the ground, the intense scent of rotting potato peels enough to make her stumble and gag. Then the teleporter was there in front of her, grabbing Minor and disappearing with him. Moments later he appeared again, this time on the other end of the hallway between Skitter and Faultline. Shamrock’s foot was already moving and she kicked him into the wall before he could touch either of them.

The stench returned, flowing out of the wall, and Lisa shouted a warning too late. When the man grasped both of Charlotte’s arms, the smell of rot surrounded her, buried her, and she was swallowed by darkness.


	4. Touch 1.4

When the darkness vomited her out again, Charlotte was distracted enough emptying her stomach all over the Merchant cape that she almost didn’t notice that they were falling from the ceiling. The Merchant teleporter certainly noticed, though, shrieking when he smashed back first into a pair of fist fighters, but he managed to activate his teleport again in time to keep from impacting the floor. The darkness enveloped them for a moment, then Charlotte was standing in the open air again.

Before she could even think about catching her breath the Merchant slugged her in the stomach, sending her gagging to the floor.

“Get away from me, lady!” He made to kick her, but was also trying to brush her vomit-covered bandanna off of his chest at the same time and missed completely, almost losing his balance. “This is so nasty. What did you even eat? Or is your power horking on people? That’s worse than Mush.”

He leaned down close and grasped Charlotte’s hair, wiping his hands off in it, then turning her head so he could see her face clearly. Dear God, unmasked to another villain already? She really should have tied the makeshift mask tighter. Then again, if she had she’d probably be choking on her own vomit right now.

“Don’t worry, just means you’ll fit right in. We’ll call you Spew.” He gave her a crooked grin, followed by a quick kick to the ribs. Before he could repeat the motion, a swarm of flies dove at his face. “Oh, right. Roach girl.” He turned away then, dismissing Charlotte as out of the fight. “Stay there, Spew, and I’ll be back to collect you in a few. If Skids finds you first, tell him Whizzer gets naming rights.”

He took a step and touched the wall, and then he and his stench were gone.

Charlotte just lay there for a moment, relishing the fresher air. Her side hurt too much to take a really deep breath, but breathing normally wasn’t a problem.

Sitting up was, though. Ouch. She groaned, breathed for another slow moment, then pushed up to her feet. The rack of soggy anniversary cards that greeted her indicated that in the not too distant past this place used to be a Hallmark store. Flooding and looting had left it in poor condition, then whatever cape was summoning dungeon décor had completely altered what was left. Creepy statues lined the wall behind the checkout. A broken emergency exit sign dangled over the entrance to a spiral staircase just behind Charlotte, down which she could hear the ongoing violence. The main entrance to the store had narrowed to a swinging door of iron bars, while in the middle of an aisle, where a door couldn’t possibly have been in the original floorplan, a stone archway opened onto a torchlit hall.

Charlotte took another breath and held it. This was insane. Surreal. She’d _probably_ had dreams with less internal logic than this, but she couldn’t think of any right now.

“How is this my life? Maybe powers come with a side order of crazy.” Which, since she was apparently talking to herself out loud, wasn’t that much of a stretch. Then again, she’d apparently had powers for three weeks, and nothing bizarre had happened until now. It probably made more sense to just blame the stupid Merchants. And Skitter. And Faultline’s team. Basically everyone else here that wasn’t her.

As cliché as it sounded to say, “No, it’s everyone else who’s crazy, not me,” Charlotte felt that she was justified in this case. Assuming this was happening at all, an assumption her aching ribs supported, none of this could really be her own fault.

Well, the good news was that she’d been teleported to the upper level of the mall. There was nobody in her immediate vicinity, thankfully, and as far as she knew all of the insanity-attracting capes were downstairs. Okay, time for a new plan, since the previous one was completely shot, including the nebulous step three. Goal number one, don’t die. Got it.

Deep breath. (Ouch.)

So, goal number two, get away from the Merchants so she wouldn’t be conscripted as Spew. Or, for that matter, drugged or raped or any of the mundane yet terrible fates she’d been dreading before discovering she had powers. Those weren’t made any less awful simply because she now had something else to worry about. Concretely, getting away meant escaping the mall, which conveniently aligned with goal “don’t die,” so this even counted as multitasking.

She wasn’t wearing a mask anymore, but Lisa had been right about it just drawing attention. If she didn’t hide her face, none of the gang members except Whizzer would know she was a cape. Which meant that if she could avoid the teleporter, she could just slip out unnoticed. Easy, right? Stay away from someone who can go anywhere. She could do this. Somehow. The obvious first step was unfreezing and getting away from the place Whizzer knew she was, so she should just pick a door. On the scale from panic inducing to near-certain death, the brightly lit archway rated a solid “better than the other options,” so Charlotte got her feet moving and stumbled through it.

To get away from Whizzer, she needed to not be recognizable. So step two, then, was to try to find a coat or hoodie or something to use as a disguise that wouldn’t make her look like a cape. Then she’d be anonymous again. Everyone else just see a regular, scared, vulnerable, isolated teenager. …Hell. That pep talk sucked.

Charlotte got the vague impression that perhaps she was not handling the situation as calmly as she ought. Maybe step three should be to do something about the building hysteria so her decisions wouldn’t be as idiotic as whatever she’d done to end up in this situation. Because, seriously? Even in Brockton Bay this kind of shit didn’t just happen to people. The problem with that step of the plan was she had no absolutely no idea how to stop her thoughts from circling the bottomless drain that had opened up over the pit in her stomach. Something calming, perhaps? Walk down the torch-lined hallway and think about butter pecan ice cream, and playing hockey, and not being hunted down by the three villains who already knew her face. No, turn left here and think about smooth jazz, and going back home to her mom, who would send her to school with girls who apparently arranged trigger events as pranks. No, pick a new direction at random and think about butterflies, and the way Taylor could probably make them grow teeth and eat someone, and this was _really_ not working!

Charlotte slumped against a pillar and stared at her feet, hyperventilating again. Step four, don’t think about anything. Just find somewhere to hide and stay there.

 _“Hey, keep moving,”_ said Skitter’s bugs, and Charlotte screamed. Then she started stomping, squishing a few roaches that had gotten too close. Running back the way she had just come, Charlotte barreled through an X of flies and mosquitoes that tried to bar her way, only for a veritable wall of flying insects to form in front of her face. The faintest hint of olive wafted from them.

_“Not that way.”_

“Why won’t you let me be?” she shrieked. “I don’t care who you are, I just want to go home. I thought you were trying to rescue me. Please don’t just kidnap me again.”

_“Quiet down before you attract attention. You need to follow my bugs. I’ve got your back, but if we don’t work together then I won’t be able to help. This is a really dangerous place.”_

“Fine.” Charlotte jabbed a finger at the swarm in front of her. “But cut the stupid theatrics and veiled threats. If you want to say ‘Obey me or drown in bugs,’ just say it. None of this ‘won’t be able to protect you, it’d be terrible if something awful happened’ gangster shit.”

_“I’ll lead you around the biggest threats, so don’t go running off. There aren’t enough bugs up by you to take down more than a few people nonlethally.”_

“What did I _just_ say? I get the point, Skitter. Next time try ‘I probably can’t catch you without killing you, so don’t test me.’ It’s more straightforward.” She clumped in the direction the arrows pointed, feeling stupid for back-talking a villain like this. She couldn’t stop herself, though. Just like everything else in the world, her mouth was running out of her control, and she was back to making up steps in the plan as she went along, hoping they would somehow support of her goal of not dying. It wasn’t like things had worked any better when she planned ahead.

She stopped walking in front of a clothing rack framed by moths. It was full of hoodies, and every last one was some shade of pink.

“Seriously? ‘From Kid 2 Kid.’ You bring me to the one store catering to kids and tweens? Will any of these even fit me?”

Skitter didn’t respond beyond making the moths form an arrow pointing down at the hoodies. Charlotte found two that were marked XL, which probably translated to an adult small. She pulled one over her head and struggled into it. It was long enough to reach her waist, but the sleeves were too short and only came to the middle of her forearms. More noticeable, of course, was that the torso was _very_ tight. Looking down, Charlotte got the impression of someone wearing fluffy spandex. The way her T-shirt visibly bunched and creased uncomfortably beneath the hoodie was actually the only saving grace to distract from the fact that she really should not be wearing something this small.

“You know, Skitter, I think I’m starting to hate you a little.”

Charlotte looked up at the bugs and felt her face blanch white. Dangling in front of her was one of those double pronged knives, suspended beneath far too many agitated wasps. A second knife, this one more of a cleaver, drifted into view around the corner.

Utterly frozen, Charlotte just stared as both knives bobbed closer to her face. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I won’t argue again.”

Nothing happened for a moment, and in the near silence Charlotte could hear the buzzing of tiny wings and the skritching of jointed legs very, very clearly. She wondered if her heart would stop completely.

 _“What are you waiting for?”_ the swarm finally said. _“You need a way to defend yourself, so grab these. By the way, I think you’ve been talking, but I can’t actually hear through my bugs, so I have no idea what you said. I’m sorry if I haven’t been answering questions or something.”_

What.

Torn between relief and indignation, Charlotte quietly resolved not to repeat any of the things she’d said where Skitter could actually hear her. And to plead insanity if it turned out that Taylor was lying to her about not being able to hear. And to stay away from capes for the rest of her life.

Shaking herself back to the present, Charlotte pulled the pink hood up over her head, then tentatively grasped the two knives. Wisps of spider thread trailed across both of her wrists as the wasps flew away. Rubbing them on her pants did nothing to alleviate the sticky feeling, and she did her best to ignore it. At least the ghostly sensation of lingering spider web wasn’t on her face.

Now suitably armed with sharp things she didn’t know how to use, Charlotte followed Skitter’s directions back into the maze. It wasn’t long before she encountered other people, most of whom looked just as lost as she felt, and seemed to be on the upper level because they wanted to avoid violence. The few who appeared more aggressive eyed the blades she was holding and kept their distance.

Charlotte was finally starting to relax when the bugs around her suddenly altered directions, swirling to point her into a small alcove.

_“Quickly, hide in here. We finally chased off that teleporter, but he’s back on the upper level now and popping room to room in a search pattern looking for you. I’m not sure if he wants to use you against us as a hostage or just take you with him when he retreats, but neither version is good. Don’t let him touch you.”_

Right. Something else Charlotte had zero control over.

 _“His teleportation has a range of a few hundred yards,”_ Skitter continued, _“and it’s topology based, rather than line of sight. He touches a wall and emerge anywhere on that surface, though it’s still not clear to me when can follow a surface around corners and when that counts as a new wall or floor. It’s kind of inconsistent so far.”_

Weird and possibly interesting, but how does that help stay away from him? Charlotte crouched down into one corner, hoping this would make her at least slightly less noticeable. It probably wouldn’t make much difference, though. The bright pink hoodie wasn’t doing anything to help her hide.

It was only a few seconds before Whizzer popped into existence in the far doorway, then reappeared an instant later in the middle of the floor. He did a 360 scanning everyone in view, and then vanished.

 _“I think you’re clear, but give it another thirty seconds to be sure,”_ whispered Skitter. Charlotte debated with herself for a moment about whether the swarm voice was creepier in its loud chittering version or soft hissing version. Honestly, it didn’t make a difference. Once you knew that bugs were talking to you, the volume didn’t matter.

She had counted to twenty two when Whizzer’s rotten potato smell spilled out of the wall behind her, and Charlotte dove to the floor just before he appeared.

“Ha! Nice try with the disguise, Spew,” he said. “Wouldn’t have recognized you if there hadn’t been so many bugs near you. Here’s a hint: regular people don’t like being swarmed like that.”

He laughed as Charlotte scrambled to her feet and started running for the doorway. He teleported right in front of her, swinging a fist, but she ducked around the spot his scent filled, and he missed.

“I’m kinda curious whether the bugs are from Roach girl or if they are just attracted to you, Spew. We’ll have to see if they still chase you when we get back to base.”

He jumped around the room while he spoke, taunting her as she ran. Just as she reached the doorway, his stench billowed up from the floor into her path. With too much momentum to stop and nowhere to dodge, Charlotte stabbed desperately into the odiferous cloud, swinging the cleaver around at the same time.

Whizzer appeared, and her strikes landed with disappointing results. Her grip on the cleaver was poor and the angle was worse, so when it struck Whizzer’s arm it twisted in her hand so that the edge didn’t bite at all. Instead, the flat of the blade ended up pushing him weakly. He grunted and stepped back.

An uncomfortable tension on her other hand drew Charlotte’s eye to the double pronged cheese fork sliding out of two bloody gouges in Whizzer’s stomach. Once clear of her weapon, his wounds welled with crimson and he stumbled. Hands clutching at the stab wound, he silently teleported away.

Charlotte stared at the slowly dripping blade, watching her hand tremble. The cleaver fell from her other hand and she covered her mouth before a moan could escape. Oh, God. Oh, God. Had she actually done that? Had she just stabbed someone? Had she just _killed_ someone?

She tried to drop the fork/knife thing, but her fingers wouldn’t unclench.

 _“Good work.”_ Skitter’s swarm was back, gradually filling out into a humanoid shape. _“Teleporters are hard to pin down.”_

Charlotte shook her head, refused to look at the bug clone.

 _“Hey, you’re doing fine. It’s a straight shot from here to the stairwell you need to get to Faultline’s people.”_ The swarm pointed the direction she needed to go, then dispersed into small clusters that scattered back out through the maze. One cluster remained hovering at knee height, shadowing her movements. _“Tattletale will meet you there.”_


	5. Touch 1.5

Lisa was not Charlotte’s favorite person at the moment. Every time the blonde caught sight of her there was a renewed fit of giggling. As grating as that was, it was still better than the uninhibited cackle that erupted when Charlotte first made her appearance in that tight pink hoodie, face hidden behind a lemon-yellow shawl that Taylor’s bugs had delivered to her as she descended the stairs.

Lisa had tried to explain that she wasn’t laughing at Charlotte, rather at Taylor for picking out the “costume.” At least, that’s what she gathered from Lisa’s comment about “shopping with Skitter,” but the explanation hadn’t been exactly coherent through the laughter, and Charlotte had since defaulted to simply ignoring everything out of the girl’s mouth, at least as much as possible.

Which meant she was focusing her attention on everyone else in the … Roman temple? Yes, that’s what it looked like here in the center of the maze. Charlotte was embarrassed to admit that the dozens of bodies on the floor were only the second thing she had noticed. That was the sort of thing that ought to have captured her attention immediately, especially since it hadn’t been initially obvious that they were just unconscious, not dead. A room full of bodies wasn’t just a red flag, it was a flashing neon sign with accompanying klaxon, blaring “DANGER: You Could Be Next!” But no, the first thing that captured Charlotte’s focus had been the smells.

The relaxing scent of fresh rain that had permeated the entire dungeon maze was far stronger now, emanating from a skinny girl with platinum blonde hair who was sitting lazily on a marble bench. She was draped in a dark green robe and wore an artful mask, also green, covering her entire face. Offsetting the professional image of her costume were the purple tennis shoes poking out from beneath the robe, and the matching purple barrettes in her hair. Layered under the rain was Lisa’s recognizable rosemary, a sharp wasabi wafting off the teen in the gas mask with her arm in a splint, and a nauseating expired milk odor that surrounded the heavyset man guarding the largest doorway.

It was only after her power had fed her these impressions that she had asked about the prone figures and been told about Newter’s ability to drug anyone he touched out of their mind. How he had ended up being paid for violence rather than recreational or even medical anesthesia, Charlotte had no idea. She still hadn’t met the man, so maybe he just liked punching people. Regardless, it certainly was a convenient skill, judging by how many people here _didn’t_ have to be beaten unconscious. Which wasn’t to say that there hadn’t been fighting. There were plenty of Merchants who sported bruises or broken limbs, or who were immobilized by some sort of glue generated by Gregor, the heavy guard with disgustingly translucent skin.

Minor wasn’t present, but Brooks, Senegal, and another of Lisa’s minions were. Charlotte did her best to keep her distance from all of them, especially Senegal who was scruffy and had openly leered at her tight outfit. A teen boy was passed out next to the burly minion, who had been introduced as Jaw. Apparently he was the person Skitter had come to rescue, but he’d “somehow” gotten dosed with one of the cloths soaked with Newter spit. Charlotte had already had suspicions about her own rescue, but this kid also looked more kidnapped than saved. He didn’t smell like anything to her, though, so she didn’t think they were snatching him for a power.

Lisa had divined her suspicions and spouted some justification, but Charlotte was still ignoring her and didn’t feel particularly inclined to believe the parts she heard. Lisa had dropped the topic at that point, but hadn’t stopped giggling at her outfit.

Charlotte decided she needed some better company and drifted toward the girl in green. Wasabi gas mask jumped up and intercepted her before she got halfway.

“Hey, leave Labyrinth alone. What do you want?”

“Nothing, sorry,” said Charlotte, tugging at the tassels of her shawl-mask thing. “Just someone to talk to. I won’t bother her. Or you. Sorry.”

“Well, if you’ve got questions you can ask me. Faultline says we’re working together tonight. Who are you?”

“Um, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t actually have… I wasn’t a cape before today.”

“Oh.” Wasabi girl’s voice softened. “That’s fine. I’m Spitfire.” She stuck out a hand.

“Hey!” yelled Lisa. “Don’t do anything stupid, skinny.”

Charlotte jerked her hand back and hugged herself. “Right, sorry.”

Spitfire took offense on her behalf and whipped around to face Lisa. “Shut it, Tats!”

“No, she’s right,” said Charlotte. “I think I’m a Striker, maybe? Something happens when I touch people. I’ll need to learn to be careful.”

“Maybe so, but she could have said it in a dozen different ways that didn’t require her to be a bitch. Honestly, Tattletale, you call yourself a Thinker? Did you not hear her say she just triggered?”

“She didn’t, though,” Lisa’s smirk hadn’t gone anywhere. “You’ve had powers for weeks, haven’t you, skinny? Kind of disingenuous of you to imply otherwise. Leviathan, right? Right.”

Charlotte froze, immersed in her nightmare again. It was a malevolent deluge that swamped out light and thought and air. Nothing penetrated that maelstrom except four glowing eyes. The pervasive smell of rain from Labyrinth was suddenly far less comforting than it had been.

“ _This_ is how you’re trying to get on my good side?” Spitfire asked. “Vague accusations and bringing up someone’s trigger? I’d have thought you were smarter than that, but after the past, what, _four_ times we met? I’m not even surprised.”

Lisa visibly bristled. “Oh, really? Little miss napalm thinks she’s smarter than me? Well, I’m not the one who burned her own house down then told her mom that…”

 _< This is Faultline, come in!> _Spitfire and Gregor’s radios both crackled at the same time, thankfully cutting Lisa off before she could make Spitfire even angrier.

“We copy,” answered Gregor.

_< Meet us at the vehicles, quickly. Squealer drove off in her tank with our objective, and she grabbed Newter on her way out.>_

Spitfire cursed, and Gregor responded with a terse “On our way.”

The two of them each took one of Labyrinth’s hands and started walking, passing through a dungeon wall as if it wasn’t there.

“Hey, geniuses!” Lisa called after them. “We’re still stuck navigating the maze. I’m pretty sure your boss wanted us to come too, since she said ‘meet _us_ ,’ which includes Skitter. Allies, remember?”

A few seconds later the three capes phased back through the wall. “Get your asses over here, then,” grouched Spitfire.

Lisa’s minions were already moving (Jaw carrying the teen boy over his shoulder), and Labyrinth touched each of their arms as they approached. With each touch they glanced around at something in mild surprise, before walking though the wall. Charlotte was next and stepped forward nervously.

“Ah, possibly not a great idea after all,” said Lisa. “Let’s not put the Striker in contact with the Shaker 12. Skinny and I can make our own way.”

Gregor looked at them suspiciously. “Will it hurt her?”

“No, just…”

“Then we’ll deal. We are in a hurry.”

Tattletale clearly wanted to argue some more, but at Spitfire’s gesture Labyrinth reached out and tapped both of them.

There was an instant of intensity, as though a summer rainstorm had shot through her and into the surrounding area, and when Charlotte had blinked the dungeon maze was gone, replaced by the mundane walls of the mall. The exit to the parking lot was now a straight shot through an open hallway, a mere dozen yards away.

“Oh,” said Labyrinth, her voice sounding very young. “That’s interesting.” She reached toward Charlotte again, but Spitfire caught her hand.

“Later,” she said. “We need to go save Newter.”

Labyrinth nodded, and everyone moved quickly for the doors. Walking beside Charlotte, Lisa let out a held breath.

“What?”

Lisa shook her head, answering quietly. “Just glad that didn’t go worse. Power interactions can be problematic even when you aren’t enhancing the ability of one of the strongest Shakers in North America.” Brooks was holding the door open, watching down the hall as they passed through to the outside.

“Is that what I do? Enhance powers?” Well, it made a kind of intuitive sense, with the way that the cape’s smells intensified when she touched them.

“I’d have thought it was obvious.” Lisa’s eye roll felt more than a little condescending. “But if you didn’t even notice you were a cape, maybe someone needs to spell things out for you. You are a Trump. You boost other capes. There’s more to it than that, of course, but we’ll have to test you with the other Undersiders to nail down the specifics. Put a pin in that, though, ‘cause right now we need to talk Skitter out of doing something dumb again.”

Looking up, Charlotte saw Skitter sitting shotgun in a black SUV. Minor stood off to the side, a weeping wound on his face and a bloody laceration on one forearm. Faultline was already behind the wheel, tapping her fingers impatiently. Shamrock was in the driver’s seat of a second vehicle, this one dark green. Her hair was badly singed, but she didn’t look hurt. Lisa walked around to the open window through which a stream of insects were steadily filling the foot well.

“Skitter, no. This is a bad idea.”

 _“We agreed to a truce to fight the Merchants. I’m honoring that.”_ Great, back to the whispery swarm voice.

“That doesn’t mean we should help them chase down their payday. Have you even asked what their job is?”

_“I’m helping them get their teammate back. Squealer used a mechanical arm to pick up Skidmark and Newter before she drove off.”_

“But…”

_“No. I can make a difference here.”_

“It doesn’t have to be you, Skitter.”

_“It does. The tank is cloaked, and I’m the one who can track it.”_

“What about Bryce? Don’t you need to complete your own mission?”

_“He’s rescued, it’s done. Have Jaws take him back to your shelter, and I’ll bring his sister by tomorrow.”_

Faultline cut in, then. “Time to go. Who’s coming?”

“Dammit, dammit, dammit!” muttered Lisa. “Fine, you can help, but I’m coming to negotiate terms and to head off any more noble idiocy. Minor, get Brooks to look you over, have your guys get Bryce and our new friend back to the shelter safe. We’ll meet you there in two hours at most.”

Charlotte looked nervously at the four men. Senegal was still eyeing her. She did _not_ want to be left alone with them.

 _“Not a chance._ ” Taylor transitioned into her human voice, speaking quietly enough that Charlotte could only barely hear. “Remember why you told me to keep her safe. Do you really think your guys can keep a lid on things without one of us there to monitor? I don’t want to get back and find her gone.”

Lisa paled. “Well, that’s sure a nightmare scenario. We would be _so_ hopelessly screwed.”

“I agree. She would probably be better off in my territory. Maybe with Imp on call.”

“Decision time, ladies,” demanded Faultline.

 _“Get in,”_ said Skitter. _“You’re both coming.”_

\---0---

Either there were no shocks on the SUV, or the roads were even more badly damaged than she’d known. Possibly both.

Underneath the droning echo of the swarm, Skitter’s voice was tense as she gave directions. _“No, take the next right after this. We can’t get past the pothole she drove over. …North, she turned north, and she’s speeding up.”_

Faultline followed the instructions without comment, handling the vehicle with confidence despite the dark and the way every bump sent them jouncing sideways towards gutted buildings. Shortly after leaving the mall the two vehicles had split up, Skitter using her bugs to direct Shamrock in a pincer movement so that Squealer couldn’t lose them both.

_“She stopped, off the road. I think she’s idling in front of a shopping center, hoping the cloak will hide her while we drive right past. I’m sending Shamrock around the back way.”_

They rounded a corner. _“ETA one minute.”_

Exactly three seconds later Skitter shouted “Swerve!” and grabbed the wheel at the same time as something bright and loud erupted out of an empty parking lot down the block. Charlotte caught a glimpse of something streaking through the air, then thunder shuddered through her bones and the van was airborne for a brief moment. The next thing she knew, the world was on its side and she was staring past a roiling mass of insects at a large shape with way too many headlights. It roared out onto the road, then vanished into silence and invisibility.

Panting, Charlotte realized that she had just survived another cape attack. She wished she could have said she suddenly regretted her decision to get in the SUV, but chasing after a tinker’s invisible, weaponized monstrosity had always sounded like a terrible idea. Worse, despite the close call with whatever gun had just tried to turn her into a crater, she was still more scared of being left behind with strange men. That sounded totally irrational, but Taylor’s implication that Charlotte might be disappeared by Lisa’s minions if the villains weren’t there to keep them in line was all the justification she needed to listen to her fears.

Her seatbelt wouldn’t unbuckle, and apparently neither would Lisa’s or Faultline’s, though Skitter was already outside somehow. With a touch, Faultline’s buckle shattered and she twisted gracefully to the ground. She turned to offer assistance, but a sudden loosening at her waist had Charlotte looking down at a frayed strap that was no longer holding her in place. The ants and crickets swarming over her legs were a big hint as to how it came to be in that condition.

Charlotte clambered painfully out the now glass-less windshield, while Shamrock climbed on top of the SUV and, after a touch from Faultline dismantled the hinges, she pried off Tattletale’s door. Tattletale, looking a little woozy, or maybe concussed, let Shamrock lift her out and lower her to where Gregor waited on the ground.

“Where’s Newter?” asked Faultline, stalking over to Skitter.

_“I don’t know.”_

“I thought you said you could track that thing!”

_“I can, and I was, but it just left my range. Best guess is they’re headed to the trainyard, but that’s the best I can do unless…”_

“Unless what?”

Skitter looked at Charlotte, took a step towards her.

“Stop! No!” Lisa stumbled forward and interposed herself bodily in front of Skitter. “What is wrong with you? This is the opposite of compartmentalizing critical information. I swear, your brain on heroics is a thousand times stupider than on any drug you could name. You rescue one person who tugs your heartstrings, and suddenly you are ready to throw everything else away. Remember what we’re working toward?”

Faultline stepped up behind Skitter. “I don’t leave my people behind. If it costs you something to help, I will negotiate appropriate compensation. But,” she continued lowly, “if you’re backing out because Tattletale wants to control what other people know? The Undersiders will have made a lasting enemy tonight.”

Skitter’s hands clenched, and the buzzing around her intensified. A breathless moment passed. Then the swarm settled, her posture relaxed, and Lisa kicked an empty can by her foot as hard as she could. “Shit!”

Taylor spoke in her human voice, then. “You wanted to negotiate, Tattletale. So negotiate for what we need. We have cards to play, and allies could be useful in this, especially if we accelerate our timeframe.”

“We’re going to have to, now. If this decision gets us killed, I will never forgive you, Skitter.”

“I know.”

The two Undersiders stepped around each other, then, Tattletale facing Faultline while Skitter approached Charlotte. Charlotte didn’t know what had just happened, but it felt like yet another moment of decision passing her by, shooting her plans to pieces, and taking everything out of her control. Skitter was reaching for her hand, and if she let this happen then her chance to make a choice of her own would be gone. This went against step “don’t antagonize the supervillains,” but having some say in her life was worth that.

She stepped back.

“Wait.”

All eyes focused on her, and she gulped, then spoke to each cape in turn. Faultline first. “I am not opposed to helping. I don’t even know if I can, but I’m willing. However,” Taylor next. “I may be valuable to you, but I’m not just a card to play or a commodity to be bartered.” And finally Lisa. “I’m not an Undersider. You said I owe you some favors. You did save me tonight, and I’ll agree to repay that. But your negotiations sure as hell better not end with you kidnapping me for my power.”

Oddly, Taylor visibly flinched at that, all the bugs in the parking lot utterly freezing. Lisa’s quiet cursing coincided with a nod from Faultline, and was followed by Taylor stepping forward again, her swarm falling away to expose her extended hand.

“Yes,” said Taylor. “I promise.”

Charlotte took her hand, and once again the city was bathed in olives.


	6. Touch 1.6

All eight of them had crammed into the remaining SUV, leaving the wrecked one where it lay. Charlotte sat between Skitter and the door to ensure that she wouldn’t touch anyone else accidentally.

The combination of pleasant and noxious scents from so many capes close together was discordant enough to bother her, except that Skitter’s olive scented power was tinting everything else and dragging her attention to the surroundings.

It was odd how a smell could take up space, have a shape and texture like this. Charlotte had no sense of distance or location to associate with the olive cloud, but she did feel its magnitude, a dimensionless _more-_ ness, almost like a weight of air pressure. Specifically, she could tell that there was a helluva lot of it filling the city around her, and that it was moving. It had started in a sphere, but slowly flattened into a disk, then elongated into a cigar spearing out to the north and south. Now it was reshaping itself again, stretching and shifting in a way she couldn’t really describe but that felt vaguely lopsided.

As fascinating as that sensation was, Charlotte pulled herself back from it to pay attention to what Faultline and Tattletale were not-shouting at each other in the seat behind her.

“Because we can’t tell you some of this until we know whether you have any active contracts in the city!”

“And obviously we have at least one, as we are on a mission right now. When I say yes, you will ask questions or use your power to try to find out the nature of those contracts and our client’s identity or identities, which are privileged information that I do not disclose. Think of another way to learn what you need.”

“I can’t do that! Not without…”

“Not without revealing who you are moving against, correct. That’s the risk you run when you negotiate and make alliances.”

Tattletale groaned and cradled her head. “This is impossible. We have no leverage because Skitter is already giving you the help you need, and I’m trying to thread half a dozen conversational needles here in the back of a moving car. Can we just agree to act in good faith and postpone this until we get to the Palanquin? This time limit isn’t benefiting either of us. Just promise to pay us in kind when we’ve saved Newter.”

“That’s shockingly mature and non-controlling of you, Tattletale. You have my word.”

“Great. But I want to emphasize how important it is to keep everything you learn about skinny’s power strictly confidential. I’m sure you’ve gathered that she’s a Trump, and there are _so_ many people who would literally kill to secure her services.”

“Hmm.” Faultline tapped her chin. “Why is someone who chose the name Tattletale concerned about someone else spilling secrets? Are you just hoping for dibs on sharing the info and don’t want to get scooped?”

“This is not about me!”

“No, it isn’t. So maybe we should include the young lady herself in this conversation.” Faultline leaned forward to address Charlotte. “Do you have something that we can call you? I wouldn’t want to resort to a derogative.”

Lisa humphed.

“Um, I don’t know. Maybe… Aroma?”

“I believe that’s already in use by a Protectorate cape, but for the moment it will do just fine. Now, Aroma, in thanks for sharing your abilities tonight, I am prepared to keep everything I know about you a secret. My team will do the same. Is this acceptable?”

“I guess. I mean, yes, please. Unless you can maybe tell me what you learn? I don’t actually know much about my power yet.”

“Agreed,” said Faultline. “And do the Undersiders agree to this as well?”

Lisa rolled her eyes. “Yes. We do. I know exactly how dead I will be if the wrong people hear about this.”

They drove in relative silence for a few moments, broken only by directions from Skitter. Eventually, she announced that they were close. Her initial guess of the trainyards had been wrong, with Squealer apparently doubling back toward the city and entering a semi-residential area.

“Squealer just circled a block twice. Looks like she is going to park the tank there. Shamrock, if you turn down Lloyd to approach from the west then we should be hidden almost the whole way there.”

Faultline started issuing orders, sounding a bit too eager for the coming fight. “Thank you, Skitter. With that tank in play we need cover, not just concealment, so find us a place to hunker down out of sight for twenty minutes or so while Labyrinth claims the area. She’ll generate some walls and control firelanes. Spitfire, you and Tattletale will stay back to guard Labyrinth and Aroma. The rest of us are the strike team. Skitter, pair up with Shamrock to keep any hostiles busy while Gregor and I extract Newter. This vehicle is our primary rendezvous, Labyrinth will create a fallback for our secondary. If things go badly enough to need a tertiary, Skitter and I will delay pursuit while everyone makes their way to the Palanquin. It’s only two or three miles from here.”

Everyone nodded agreement, including Charlotte since she approved of any plan that kept her away from the action. A minute later they were piling out into the bottom level of a parking deck. The floor wasn’t remotely level, having buckled and tilted in multiple places. This was actually beneficial, since it meant there were islands of exposed concrete amid the sea of ankle deep mud that covered most of the floor.

Spitfire was still trying to navigate the door one handed when Skitter, who was still holding Charlotte’s hand, swore and sent the cloud of olives distorting again, bulging into the area behind them.

“The plan needs to change. We have Protectorate and PRT inbound from the direction of the mall. Maybe repeated explosions were enough of a problem for them to attract their notice. They’re following the route Squealer took, so they must be tracking her somehow. That new Ward Chariot is with them, so I’m guessing Tinker bullshit.”

Charlotte should have been worried about the upcoming fight, or relieved that the heroes were nearby and might rescue her from her would-be rescuers. Instead, she just felt comforted that someone else’s plans were falling apart tonight. It made her think that maybe the universe wasn’t targeting her personally after all.

“How many, and how far?”

“Battery and Assault are the other capes, and looks like two squads of PRT following in trucks. They’re a half mile back, and making good time even following her indirect path. They’ll be here in under five minutes.”

Skitter and Faultline quickly started arguing tactics, and Charlotte met Tattletale’s eyes.

“Buckle up, skinny,” she said. “This is going to be a ride.”

Charlotte looked away, but Tattletale caught her attention again. “Look. Aroma. I’m sorry for being a bitch to you earlier. Some of the things I learned tonight have me scared out of my mind. Let me give you some advice: the sooner you can get used to the insanity of cape life the happier you will be. I know you’re getting thrown in the deep end, but that’s true for most of us. Things have a way of escalating, especially here in the Bay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skitter's Augmentation:   
> As hinted in the chapter, Charlotte’s boost gives Taylor the ability to directly manipulate her range. Her range isn’t increased and remains a constant volume, but she is able to reshape that volume of control away from its default sphere of influence.
> 
> If you want the details and limitations, you can continue reading this note. If the specifics don’t matter to you, feel free to skip it. The mechanics won’t matter much to Charlotte’s perspective, and will be adequately explained in-story if I ever do a Taylor POV chapter.
> 
> ~The Augmentation~
> 
> There are both hard and soft limits on how Taylor can shape her range, and she pushed up against some of the soft limits in this chapter. Specifically, it’s a strain to distort the shape further from a sphere, and Taylor can’t easily alter her range more than six-fold in any dimension. In this chapter, she squished it from a sphere with a 3-block radius (6-block diameter) into a flat oblong shape that was a bit over 1 block tall, an unchanged 6 blocks wide, and 18 blocks long. At the cost of reducing the width, she could have further increased the length up to the max six-fold increase of 36 blocks total, but sustaining that distortion would be a real struggle. 
> 
> In addition, Taylor can shift her range around herself so she's no longer at the center. In this chapter, she did so by shifting the long axis until her total 18 block range in that direction was distributed to extended 6 blocks south and 12 blocks north of her position. That ratio, placing her one third of the way from any given edge, is close to the soft limit of this manipulation.  
> Note that her absolute range is still free to fluctuate on its own as it does in canon, which would change her total available volume of control independently of any manipulations to its shape enabled by Charlotte.
> 
> ~How far is “a block” anyway?~
> 
> Counting things in “blocks” makes sense as a mental benchmark that Taylor would use, especially early in her career. However, as a unit of measurement, “a block” is terribly imprecise. The length of a block depends greatly on where you live, and can be widely variable even within a single location. Different sources propose a conversion factor of anywhere from 9 to 22 blocks per mile. Early canon gives Skitter’s pre-caping range as alternately 2 blocks or a tenth of a mile (see 1.2 and 2.3). That would make a block measure 264 feet, which is reasonable but definitely on the low end.
> 
> I’ve chosen to interpret a block as ~440 feet (~130 meters, or 1/12th of a mile). The internet tells me this is an average for Canadian cities (i.e. what Wildbow would be familiar with when writing). It is also very close to the block length in and around my own neighborhood in Massachusetts (i.e. comparable to the New England city planning that probably created Brockton Bay).
> 
> This means that Taylor’s usual range during this period of time (three blocks) is a quarter of a mile (~400 meters), while the six block radius she expands to when at her most stressed is double that. That would make the 18-block extended range discussed above reach a mile ahead of her and half a mile behind.


	7. Touch 1.7

In Charlotte’s mind, the word “tank” evoked images of thick green armor, caterpillar treads, and a large rotating turret. None of those things were in evidence on the _thing_ doing a poor impersonation of a vehicle a block away. In a past life its core had been a railroad tanker car, so maybe that was justification enough to call it a “tank” of sorts?

Charlotte was familiar with the idea that when all you had was a hammer, everything started to look like a nail. Squealer’s creation embodied the end result if someone with a severe aversion to symmetry possessed an oversized welding torch as their only tool. The former railcar sat atop five smaller vehicles, each a different size and type. About half of the wheels had been replaced by large corrugated discs set at angles unrelated to each other or to anything else on the truck. Some spun lazily, others rattled back and forth, and a few were stationary but glowed cotton-candy pink. Most of a crane truck had been fastened to the front, the operator’s cab functioning as a cockpit or control center or whatever you called it when it was driving something with twelve or thirteen axles.

“I’m glad Skidmark’s not manning that thing,” whispered Tattletale, standing on the other side of Skitter. “The boom of the crane is modded so that his power can turn it into some sort of railgun. The previous version could adjust its aim ridiculously fast.”

“If Skidmark powers the gun, then how did it shoot us before?” asked Charlotte. The explosions at the mall and on the way here proved that the tank was not lacking in offensive capability.

 _“There’s a cannon barrel running almost the full length of the tanker car,”_ answered Skitter. _“Powerful, but it doesn’t have much freedom to aim. If we approach from the back, we just need to worry about the mounted guns on the sides. Most of those have to be manned to fire.”_

Faultline’s voice came over the radio. _< Almost in position. Fifteen seconds.>_

“Are you ready, Elle?” asked Spitfire.

“Yes,” said Labyrinth, gripping Charlotte's hand tighter and leaning forward to peer more closely through the gaps in the fence. The smell of rain had permeated the entire area, apparently propagating her ability far faster than usual.

_< Five seconds. … Go!>_

Pyramids of granite shot up underneath the vehicle, wrought iron trees emerging from their sides to lock it in place. Elsewhere in the complex brass mushrooms sprouted out of the ground and walls, some mere inches in height, others two or three feet tall. Each object that flowed into the world was accompanied by a bubbling in the rain scent around her, and Charlotte smiled at the sensation.

Shouts from the Merchants (Skitter had said there were 26 on site) changed in pitch as spiny aluminum pinecones littered the ground around their feet. Skitter’s bugs descended to further harass them, and if things were going to plan then Faultine, Gregor, and Shamrock would be moving in from another direction, disabling gang members and securing a path back to the SUV.

With a roar the tank's engine came to life and its wheels spun uselessly against the air. A moment later the sound warbled and cut out, the tank disappearing at the same time. If Charlotte hadn't known about the cloaking field she would have thought it teleported away.

 _“Our turn,”_ said Skitter, and with a push the pre-cut length of fencing fell inward for them to run across.

Just before they reached the first mushroom, Labyrinth swung her gaze around at each of them, and with a pulse of rain her creations vanished from their sight.

“So wrong,” huffed Lisa. “Making Labyrinth even _more_ of a Shaker.”

They kept their distance from the merchants, who either ignored them or didn’t notice them, too busy beating at the bugs on their faces and hands. Charlotte saw one lying on the ground struggling frantically to raise his arms away from his belt, but they were webbed in place with near-invisible threads. A long knife lay beside him, and a writhing mass of cockroaches was pushing it further beyond his reach. Lisa kicked him in the shoulder as they passed, and he rolled a half turn, stopping hard against something illusory.

A dozen steps later, the clamor of the engine suddenly assaulted her ears again and the vehicle burst into existence, this time appearing to float in the air since Charlotte could no longer see the granite protrusions holding it up. Reaching the tank, Spitfire ran underneath it and spat a stream of blazing heat at the underside of the railcar. Instead of splashing against the metal, the stream diverted away from it, splitting into ascending rivulets that spread up along the contour of the tanker but never got closer than half an inch away from the surface.

“Right,” said Lisa. “Who needs armor when you have force fields?”

Spitfire tried again, targeting the flatbed truck supporting the right rear of the tanker, and a few droplets of fire made it through to sizzle against the front fender, but most of it was protected too. Faultline and the rest of her team arrived in time to see her next attempt, which was equally ineffective.

Skitter extended the hand not holding Charlotte's and slowly lay it against the cab of the flatbed. When she managed to touch it without trouble, she reached into a buzzing swarm beside her and drew out a long knife that Charlotte was pretty sure was the same one that merchant had dropped earlier. She had no difficulty tapping the truck with the knifepoint, but when she swung at it with real force, the knife was pushed to the side before making contact.

Meanwhile, the tank had continued to spin its wheels. Apparently those corrugated discs were not dependent on contact with the roadway to provide thrust, because the whole monstrosity was shifting and rattling in place. If it had only been perched on the pyramids and not also trapped by Labyrinth's metal forest, it would have already driven off. 

"That's my job, then," said Faultline. She lay her hand gently on the underside of the tanker and with a surge of grapefruit generated a crack in its wall about twice the size of her palm. A second, stronger pulse of her power widened it and forced it to branch into a longer forked fissure, but compared to the size of the tanker wall it seemed inconsequential. Faultline's frustrated curse seemed to indicate that she had expected something more dramatic.

Without warning, the tank's cannon fired and a pit exploded in the asphalt across the complex. The recoil of firing rocked the tank a bit, and everyone flinched. A second shot moments later had a much greater effect, shifting the whole thing through the air by about a foot.

 _"Trouble,"_ announced Skitter, shouting some to be heard over the tank's engine. _"The heroes heard that and have given up on my distraction. We have maybe thirty seconds."_

"Fine," shouted Faultline, stripping off a glove. She held her hand out to Charlotte, placing the other one against the tank again. "Aroma, if you would? I need some help to get around whatever dampeners Squealer has protecting this thing." 

Both Skitter and Labyrinth let go of her hands, and Charlotte stepped forward. As soon as her fingers touched Faultline's, jagged grapefruit lightning shot across the surface of the tanker, chaining end to end as the metal fractured. A wide chasm in the metal emitted a faint orange glow, and Charlotte could see a thick round pipe. A second crack of lightning shot up a mount and split open the side of the pipe. Moments later fire erupted from the pipe, widening the rift and further destroying the cannon. 

Faultline pulled Charlotte into a run towards the front of the tank, tracing grapefruit fissures along the side as they went. When they reached the cab Faultline took a deep breath, then sent a storm of lightning shooting through it. Three, four, five cracks of grapefruit scented destruction, and the whole thing split in half and broke apart. It didn't separate very far, still held in place by the invisible iron trees, but it was no longer supported evenly by the pyramids and the separated pieces slumped and tilted in different directions as they floated in the air. That provided more than adequate space for Shamrock to leap up gracefully into the cab and disappear inside. A second later the roaring engine cut out, allowing Charlotte to hear the approaching sirens. 

Shamrock yelled for Gregor, then appeared at the jagged opening dragging an unconscious Squealer. Charlotte gaped at the gushing, bloody lack where Squealer's right leg now stopped halfway down the thigh. Gregor shot a stream of something from his hands that covered the stump and congealed enough to hold the blood in, then he and Faultline lifted her down to the ground. Faultline quickly started tying something into a tourniquet around the woman's upper thigh, but Charlotte wasn't sure it would do much good. 

Moments later, two PRT trucks came into view, lights flashing, until a wall of insects rose to block them from sight. At the same time a mechanical arm extended from the tank and released with a clunk, dropping both Newter and Skidmark to the ground. Labyrinth and Tattletale were there with cloths wrapped around their hands to roll Newter onto a makeshift stretcher. They each grabbed hold at the front, while Gregor came behind them and took the rear, starting to move him towards the waiting SUV. Shamrock leapt down from the cab the next moment, clutching a bulky metal briefcase.

"Got it, boss."

Faultline nodded at her, then turned away as a woman's voice blared over a loudspeaker.

"Undersiders and Faultline's Crew! Stand down and submit to arrest. You have been involved in violence tonight that resulted in dozens of deaths."

 _"All deaths were caused by the merchants attacking each other,"_ spoke the swarm from all around. _"We are not responsible for this."_

"Even if that is true," the woman sounded angry, "you contributed. From what we can tell, you probably instigated this. The merchants we spoke with claim you attacked their gathering."

_"Battery, we are leaving. Skidmark and Squealer are both here, injured and unconscious. I hope you manage to keep them locked up."_

Insects formed into arrows, directing Charlotte and the others away from the PRT under cover of the swarm.

"Skitter! When we spoke this morning, you said you understood that your group was low priority to law enforcement because you were helping to rebuild, working to restore order, and keeping a low profile. This is the opposite of _all_ those things. If you leave now, I guarantee you will not be low priority tomorrow."

The swarm buzzed louder. _"Really? Helping to capture five anarchic capes, breaking up a violent riot, and rescuing abducted citizens isn't helping to keep order in this failing city? The merchants are a blight that is actively eroding the good everyone else tries to do."_

"Starting a war with a gang of capes, inciting and participating in violence that results in a double digit body count, and engaging in a high speed chase across the city are diametrically opposed to keeping order and making things safer. You are destablizing the entire city. Yield now or we will be forced to attack you. Faultline, this goes for you too. In the past you have kept your activities away from Brockton Bay, but teaming up with local villains for egregious actions like this will completely destroy any arrangement you may have had with the Protectorate."

 _"No,"_ said the swarm, opening up a wide circle around Skidmark and Squealer. _"You should tend to the wounded Merchants. This alliance of convenience with Faultline arose because the Merchants had attacked and abducted people from both of our groups. We are leaving to treat our own wounded. Come to my territory or to the Palanquin if you wish to discuss it further. I will give you my statement then. But we will not submit to arrest now or then."_

By now Charlotte and the others were behind another building, and the swarm dispersed, flowing across the complex in the opposite direction from their escape.

Charlotte looked back, walking slower. Now, with the bugs gone, was her best chance to reach the heroes. But the heroes didn't drown people in cockroaches or shoot off their legs, and Charlotte really didn't want to be the reason that the heroes figured out which way the villains had gone. That would not be great for her life expectancy. Then again, if she gave up this chance, she would be at the villains' questionable mercy for the foreseeable future. Who knew when she would get another chance to run.

Yes, Battery and Assault were strong. They regularly fought Fenja, Menja, and Krieg, and occasionally held off Hookwolf. They could protect her. She tensed.

"Skinny!" hissed Tattletale. "Don't do it!"

Charlotte froze, hesitating a moment too long, then broke into a run that lasted all of two steps before Lisa wrapped herself around Charlotte's knees and brought her to the ground. This time, there was no eruption of scent, Lisa's rosemary aura remaining locked tight in one spot.

"Please," begged Tattletale. "Aroma, please. Give me three days. I promise you that I will deliver you safely to the PRT after that time, but if you go to them now we are both as good as dead. Hell, if Chariot sees you we could still be facing that scenario. You need to keep out of sight for now."

Apparently Charlotte's skepticism showed, because Lisa spoke even more desperately. "Please, you don't understand. One of the villains has infiltrated the PRT, and he wants me dead. I will pay you a hundred thousand dollars. No, a hundred thousand _a day_ if you just give me a little time and not go to him!"

Skitter's olive scent approached. "Tattletale, let her up."

Tattletale unwrapped herself from around Charlotte's legs and slowly stood. Charlotte looked up to see Taylor, face visible again without the curtain of bugs she had worn until now. Taylor was extending a hand to help her up. She didn't take it.

"Lisa is right. Going to the PRT now would play into that villain's hands, and I promised I wouldn't let you be kidnapped for your power, by us or anyone else. Three days, then you will be free to make your own choices."

Charlotte didn't know what to think, but short of screaming to draw the heroes here, she didn't know how she could choose any differently. She reached for Taylor's hand and felt olives wash over her again.

\---0---

Contrary to her expectations, their getaway was not a high speed chase through the city, or even a quick drive. Faultline had chosen to abandon the SUV in favor of moving more stealthily on foot. Even with three heroes with Mover ratings pursuing them, getting away quickly was less important than doing so quietly. 

Charlotte understood, but it made it so much harder than it would have been if they had just spirited her away to their base. Instead, with every step she took she kept second guessing her decision. It was still not too late to scream. She could still be rescued by the heroes. But what if Lisa was telling the truth? What if one of the Empire capes had agents in the PRT and would target her? It was all too easy to believe, with how widespread support for the Empire remained, even after all their identities were made public and they stopped holding back against the city.

Skitter walked beside her, hand held to spread her power further, keeping track of the heroes at a distance and baiting them in other directions. Several times she directed them to take cover in buildings nearby while a PRT truck rumbled by, or once when Battery flashed past in a blue and white blur. 

After over half an hour of walking through back streets, Skitter stiffened. 

_"Chariot is tracking us. He's been fiddling with some sort of gadget, and now he's following our trail."_

"Who else is with him?" demanded Faultline. She was taking a turn carrying Newter's stretcher.

_"Just Assault. They aren't moving confidently, so they may not know if the tracker is working. Battery and the PRT troops are all back at the Merchant complex, or headed that way."_

"We have to take them down without letting them call for backup."

_"Tattletale, we're in Regent's territory now. How far are we from his base?"_

"Not that far. He could get here fast enough if I can get him off his lazy ass. He’s probably even still awake. I'll call."

Faultline arranged their forces, and once again Charlotte found herself holding hands with Skitter and Labyrinth, this time watching out the second floor of a derelict apartment building.

They were only waiting for about five minutes before she heard the sound of an approaching motorcycle. Shortly after that, Skitter announced that Regent had arrived and was positioned in an opposite building. 

Two minutes later, Chariot and Assault swung into view around a corner. Chariot had bright gold roller skates and a dull chrome exoskeleton framing his limbs. He was leading the way while Assault bounced behind him. They were traveling at a decent clip, but not fast enough that a crash would inconvenience them much, even if they weren't abnormally durable. 

The two heroes wove back and forth across the street before approaching the door Charlotte had come through. As they reached it a pulse of rain accompanied the emergence of a small lip of stone at ankle height, which forced both of them to stumble. Chariot fell directly into Faultline's hands that reached out the doorway to tap his exoskeleton in as many places as she could reach, and it literally shattered off of his body. He spun around to power away, but Faultline lunged in a dive and swiped her hand across his skates, fracturing them into pieces, and he fell to his feet. 

Meanwhile Shamrock was punching Assault, which shouldn't have done anything, but his arms spasmed when he tried to block, and her first strike hit him in the ear breaking his communicator. Somehow this resulted in him falling backwards, which allowed Shamrock to back off, having successfully delayed the call to backup. Skitter swarmed him as he recovered, but he still managed to reach down and catch up Chariot as the ward fell out of his broken skates. Bounding away from the buzzing swarm, Assault reached up to tap his communicator, but found it nonfunctional and moved to retreat. The swarm let him do so, hounding his movements but not harassing him.

By this point Faultline had piled the shards from Chariot's tech into a mound. Stepping back she signaled Spitfire who buried the remains of the skates and exoskeleton in glowing fire that immediately started to melt some of the weaker components. Spitfire kept spraying liquid fire until the whole thing was twisted slag. As the light and heat died down, everyone gathered in the road, including two new teen capes. The boy with a crown and scepter who smelled of watermelon was pretty obviously Regent, and the girl beside him wearing a white devil mask and exuding an aroma of clam chowder was introduced as Imp when Skitter demanded to know why she was there.

"You interrupt my date to ask Regent for help punching heroes and don't expect me to tag along? Besides, I saved Clover girl by shoving Assault over, so I think some thanks might be in order."

"Sure, thanks," said Tattletale. "You kids can get back to enjoying your night."

"Wait, date?" asked Skitter.

Tattletale sighed. Imp cocked her hip and sassed back, "Nah, I think I'll tag along. You guys look like you're having an exciting night. Who's the pastel diva?"

"Those aren't pastels," said Lisa.

At the same time Skitter said, _"Involuntary Striker power, don't touch. She's going by Aroma for the moment."_

“Gotcha,” said Imp. “I like your style, Aroma.”

“What’s your plan, Undersiders?” asked Faultline.

Lisa answered immediately. “We have a lot of things to work out. Skitter and I will accompany Aroma to the Palanquin, if you’ll permit us.”

Faultline nodded her assent.

“Hey, you aren’t leaving us behind,” objected Imp.

“If you are coming, you both get to help carry Newter,” said Skitter, thumbing over her shoulder at where Gregor and Shamrock had just lifted the stretcher.

Charlotte blinked, shaking away the ghostly scent of chowder.

“Yeah, that’s not my style,” said Regent.

“You help, or you don’t come.”

“Fine,” said Regent, slouching over to take Gregor’s place. They started walking.


	8. Touch 1.8

The Palanquin was, as Faultline had said, mostly intact. Plywood covered the seaward windows and the façade had taken a beating, but the club hadn’t flooded and didn’t appear to be in any danger of falling down. Compared to much of the city, it had weathered Leviathan with aplomb.

The most miraculous part, though, was that the bar had survived. It counted as a miracle because mounted to one side of it was a magnificent, beautiful, shining, professional coffee machine. Charlotte ignored the fact that she couldn’t taste it and savored the dark nectar like the glorious, life-giving caffeine vehicle that it was. Lifting her stupid yellow scarf for every sip was a pain, but after three cups (and a visit to the facilities, which delightfully had both hot and cold running water) she felt like maybe 3 a.m. was not quite such a cursed hour after all, and that she could begin to process some of the insanity of the past day. Her hands might be shaking a bit, but she was pretty sure that was from the caffeine rather than from overwhelming panic, so all things considered this was a step up.

Not that it took much to be an improvement over being abducted, terrorized, and dropped in the middle of a riot. Still, even if this place wasn’t safe it was peaceful. Charlotte could breathe here.

All of her plans tonight had failed disastrously, but she hadn’t really had any real goals to work toward besides “don’t be in this position anymore.” She’d succeeded at lots of individual steps like “don’t piss off the walking plague” and “don’t die,” so maybe she just needed to set some actual goals for herself. Decide what she wanted to do beyond the moment, establish a long term plan.

So, time to take stock. Charlotte was now a cape. She had managed almost three weeks of normal life while a parahuman, so it was possible that she could go back to that, but the events of tonight made that seem just short of unattainable. With a single touch she’d been outed to villains and learned their identities. In one night Charlotte had discovered her powers, witnessed villains dismember each other, aided those villains in escaping the Protectorate, and even personally _stabbed a man_.

Oh, hell. Her hands were shaking again. Charlotte was starting to regret declining the wine Faultline had offered everyone upon arriving.

This wasn’t something she could solve once and then ignore afterward, because that’s not how blackmail worked. Someone gets a hold over you and asks for a favor. Once you paid off your “favor” they now had two things to hold over you. She needed to negotiate some lasting security from these people, or buy time so she could obtain protection from the heroes and PRT. Right. Because they had been so very effective combating the villains tonight.

No, that wasn’t fair. Assault and Chariot had been ambushed and hopelessly outnumbered by villains, only two of whom were already wounded at the time. They hadn’t stood a chance in that particular situation, but it wasn’t like that all time. The fights usually lasted a whole lot longer than ten seconds, and sometimes the Protectorate came out on top. Like when they finally took down the ABB this year. Usually they only lost about half of their fights. Across basically every engagement they’d had in the past three decades since the Empire started claiming areas of the city. Shit. How well could they really protect her?

Regardless, her secret was out on the first day she learned about it, meaning she was probably stuck in the “cape life” for good.

So, priority one: learn about her power so she knew what she was negotiating with. Priority two: figure out how to mitigate the damage of knowing Taylor and Lisa’s identities. Their faces. Their names. Because that was bad. Priority three: get another cup of coffee so she’d stop nodding off and thinking recursively. Priority four: get home to the shelter so she could sleep and tell her mother about her powers.

And that was enough priorities, because if she was going to try to devise plans for each of those, her head would be way too full of steps to remember any of them except the coffee. She added a glorp of cream to the latest mug, then sat staring at it as it cooled, little ribbons of white riding convection currents, slowly staining everything a uniform tan.

“Aroma?”

“Hmm?” Charlotte looked up to see Spitfire at the other end of the bar. Her arm had been rewrapped in a much more solid-looking cast, and she had exchanged her gas mask for a simple red cloth with eyeholes. She held an empty shot glass in her good hand.

“We finished bandaging Newter and are ready to talk. We’ll meet upstairs.”

“Okay.”

She plodded after Spitfire, following her up to the second floor then down a hall to a room with a large oak table in the center. It was either a very comfortable conference room or a very formal looking den, with plush chairs and purple blackout curtains. Skitter, Tattletale, and Regent already sat on one side of the table, facing Shamrock and Gregor. Spitfire took a seat beside her teammates. There were several empty chairs, and Charlotte selected one on the Undersider’s half of the table but towards the end, separated by a couple seats. So far she was inclined to rely on Faultline’s team more than the others, but this was their home turf and giving them too many advantages would be a mistake. Faultline had already acknowledged her as a separate party, so she shouldn’t lose much by sitting there. All of which, Charlotte admitted to herself, were merely excuses and justifications to stay away from the nauseating smells that Gregor and Shamrock exuded. It was much more pleasant to situate herself closer to the rosemary, olive, and watermelon aromas of the Undersiders.

Charlotte leaned back, realizing just how hungry she was. With the state of the city, she’d given up on decent food some time ago, but the Palanquin was remarkably well maintained and well stocked. Presumably mercenaries knew how to do well for themselves financially. Was there a chance they actually had chowder? She was really starting to crave it. That would be more wonderful than the coffee.

Charlotte fidgeted a bit, waiting for someone to speak. No one did, and she realized why when Faultline finally walked in and approached the head of the table.”

“We have a number of things to discuss, and it is already very late. I suspect that we are going to need much more time to make certain decisions than we have available now. So let’s please limit ourselves to the most urgent matters that need to be addressed before we get some needed rest. You are all welcome to sleep here tonight under Truce rules, and we will reconvene as necessary in the morning.”

Tattletale took the lead. “Yes, agreed. Before we start I need to stress that this topic is extremely sensitive. Don’t get offended, but I need to recheck this room for bugs. I know I already vetted it when we first got here, but something is pinging my power as out of place.”

Faultline nodded, pulling out a tablet. “I’ll bring the in-house security back up and do a clean shutdown of this section to make sure it all shut off correctly.”

Tattletale did a quick circuit of the room focusing on the walls and fixtures, ending beside Charlotte. She scowled at the shiny surface of the table.

Faultline suddenly whipped a pistol out of her waistband and aimed at the opposite wall. Worryingly, she was staring at her tablet rather than where the gun was pointing, so “aimed” seemed optimistic.

“Crap,” said Tattletale. “Wait!”

Charlotte jumped as the nebulous hint of clam chowder coalesced instantly into the figure of Imp lounging in the center of the conference table.

“Hey, chill! It’s just me.”

“Imp, you idiot,” grouched Tattletale.

Faultline slowly holstered her gun. “Using Stranger powers to hide from my team doesn’t exactly further the cause of trust here.”

“Sorry, I wasn’t trying to pull anything.”

 _“Imp.”_ Skitter didn’t have any visible bugs, near her or filling the room, but she still had the buzzing fear voice going. Charlotte shuddered.

“No, really. I swear, this time was unintentional. I have to work to suppress my power, and I was just relaxing. It’s, like, half an hour past my bedtime, and we walked practically forever.”

“Screw you,” said Regent. “You left me to carry that stretcher by myself!”

Tattletale and Faultline made almost identical gestures rubbing their temples, then froze as they noticed each other.

“Well, that was it, then,” said Tattletale, clearly trying to move on. “Room’s clean. Security off?”

Faultline tapped her tablet a few times. “Yes.”

Tattletale turned to Skitter. “Area secure? No teams from either side watching the place?”

“None. PRT or otherwise.”

“Okay.” Tattletale took a breath. “Okay.” She opened her mouth to speak.

Nothing came out.

Her jaw worked a moment, then she strode back to her seat and flopped into it. “Shit, I can’t do it. Skitter? Can you…?”

Skitter nodded and leaned forward.

“It’s Coil. He bankrolls the Undersiders, but views us as disposable. He’s already demonstrated a stark disregard for the unwritten rules, between outing the Empire and kidnapping new triggers. We want to take him down before he decides we need to be eliminated.”

What?! _Coil_ had leaked the Empire identities? That rampage was his fault? Charlotte felt a seething anger in her stomach. She had lost friends and family to the Empire’s violence before, but May 6 had been an awful day, worse by far than Bakuda’s weeks of terror. That was when Keesha and her brother had died to one of Purity’s blasts, along with Rabbi Kaufmann’s family. Naomi and Ved had disappeared too, and they lived in an area that both Crusader and Night and been spotted, so it wasn’t hard to guess what had probably happened to them.

Until now, Charlotte had assumed that some PRT idiot had tried to be a whistleblower when they found out how high-profile some of the Empire capes were in their civilian identities. As if it were some sort of surprise that the white supremacist neo-Nazis had popular support among the upper crust. As if it were a surprise that the rich families were so out of touch with the failing city that they couldn’t imagine any reason for their fortunes to decline unless someone “less deserving” were taking it from them. Charlotte hadn’t been shocked at all to learn that the Anders and the Fleischers were more involved in the gang than was apparent from their “milder” public rhetoric. In all honesty, she’d been surprised that some of the other prominent families like the Stansfields, the Gwinnetts, and the Christners hadn’t been on that list.

But apparently Coil had orchestrated that leak and the subsequent massacre. And, if Tattletale hadn’t been lying earlier, he had agents in the PRT, where he could have gotten that information. Yes, Charlotte was glad to be on the side of anyone opposing a bastard like that, even if they were villains. She’d add him to her list of priorites. She was up to what, now? Five? Six? Something like that. Maybe he could have both slots.

“I see,” said Faultline, after taking a moment to digest what Skitter had said. “I will ask for your evidence of these things later, but I can disclose that we do not currently have any contracts active with Coil. He had us on retainer at one time or another, but those agreements lapsed when we left the city before Leviathan and have not been renewed.”

“Thank fuck!” Tattletale collapsed forward onto the conference table, tension falling away from every joint. “She’s telling the truth. We aren’t dead yet.”

“You seem more fearful of Coil than I would have expected, given your exploits so far,” said Gregor. “Is he truly so formidable? His competence is apparent but he has not made large moves or demonstrated much ambition.”

Tattletale laughed. “Oh, ambition he has in spades. It’s only overshadowed by his ego and his sadism.”

“More importantly,” said Skitter, “his resources make him a difficult target. He himself has a Thinker power that gives him access to dangerous amounts of information, which we can give you the details about later. On top of this, he has enslaved a powerful precog to guide his actions. His own knowledge and the predictions he receives allow him to leverage his mercenary forces with extreme precision and effectiveness, deploying them exactly where they are needed. If and when we move against him, he _will_ see us coming.”

“That’s _very_ interesting information,” said Faultline. “So if I understand correctly, you are in a Thinker battle to determine when and where to move, and you need to apply overwhelming force at the right place when you do. Given the simultaneous actions by your groups this morning, I presume that the Travelers are also in his employ?”

“Yes.”

“And their loyalties? Are they likely to support you against him?”

“No,” answered Tattletale. “His hold over them is too strong, and they haven’t seen through his duplicity yet. They still expect him to deliver on what they need.”

“That is a problem, then. We’ll need a plan to deal with them, and to counter Coil’s Thinker resources. Fortunately for you, one of our members,” she gestured at Shamrock, “has a proven invisibility to or interference with many Thinker powers, including precogs. I think this should be doable.”

“That _is_ good news, and it does give us a bit of breathing room,” said Skitter. “We’ll still want to move fast. If he gained access to Aroma he could become truly unbeatable. Giving him the time or opportunity to abduct her would be a huge mistake.”

Charlotte found herself in wholehearted agreement with that sentiment. She nodded along.

“Then we have an agreement,” said Faultline. “My team will help you to capture him. Your help in retrieving Newter is greatly appreciated and we were able to complete our mission at the same time, so we will consider our continued alliance a payment of that. Nevertheless, the scale of this operation is much larger than the skirmish with the Merchants tonight. My people are mercenaries, and we will need to ask for some additional compensation.”

“Fair,” said Skitter. “We have resources to make that happen.”

“Then everyone get some rest. We’ll plan this in the morning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This concludes Arc 1!


	9. PRT Incident Summary

#### PRT Incident Summary for June 6 2011

 **Date** : June 6 2011

 **Title** : Incident Summary (report no. ENE20110606Mm4)

 **Author** : Miss Militia (i.d. 403110)

 **Submitted to** : Director Emily Piggot (PRT28761)

 **Attention** : PRT Merchant Taskforce, PRT Undersiders Monitoring, PRT Tinker Affairs Department, PRT Fa

This summary draws from the following linked documents:

  * Incident Report _ENE20110605Ba1_ (Battery, i.d. 875171)
  * BBPD Dispatch logs _2011tempJun06_
  * After Action Report _ENE20110606Mm1_ (Miss Militia, i.d. 403110)
  * After Action Report _ENE20110606As1_ (Assault, i.d. 114898)
  * After Action Report _ENE20110606Ch1_ (Chariot, i.d. 676722)
  * PRT Interrogation logs _ENE20110606compiled_
  * After Action Report _ENE20110606Da_ (Lieutenant Davies, PRT55489)
  * FEMA Triage Reports (not linked, see dated file for MRNs)
  * FEMA and BBPD Coroner’s Reports (linked from and summarized in _ENE20110606Mm3_ )
  * BBPD Incident Report _2011Jun06hf9_1_
  * Tinkertech Review Application _ENEChariot14_2011_



**Summary:** Around 2300 hours on the evening of June 5, multiple explosions were heard at the Weymouth Shopping Center. BBPD were first on scene, and were shortly joined by Protectorate personnel, including Miss Milita, Battery, and Assault, as well as PRT squads 9, 12, and 14, under the command of Lieutenant Davies.

The entrances to the shopping center had been physically blocked or destroyed, while nearly the entire interior had been dramatically altered by Labyrinth’s power. The Shaker effect was slowly dissipating when responders arrived, and the mall had completely reverted physically by 0130 hours the following morning.

Upwards of two thousand individuals were onsite when responders arrived, many of whom were injured from mob violence or the actions of capes. National Guard were requested to support the first responders, and groups dispatched from the various FEMA camps arrived between 1215 and 0115 hours.

According to witness testimony, a large gathering of Archers Bridge Merchants gang members and capes began at around 1930 hours. This gathering was also attended by hopefuls wishing to join the gang or purchase items including contraband. Attendees were given black armbands, which the Merchant Taskforce reports is indicative of an event featuring a lethal challenge or fight to the death as the centerpiece of the gathering.

Prior to the challenge or fight, if such had been planned, the gathering was disrupted by an enormous swarm of insects consistent with Skitter’s powerset. Shortly afterwards Faultline’s crew executed a concerted attack on the exits, sealing the building. Subsequently, Labyrinth’s shaker effect altered the interior of the mall, separating groups from each other and isolating the gang’s capes. No clear picture of the engagement has emerged, but extensive damage was done to the building, hundreds were seriously injured, and 37 individuals were found dead on the scene or died of their injuries within hours of triage. The majority of the injuries and deaths appear to have been caused by small arms fire or blunt trauma from improvised weapons, suggesting that they were inflicted by gang members attending the event. Eight of the deaths and 29 major injuries are attributed to Squealer, who drove one of her vehicles through the crowded mall. The vehicle also did a great deal of damage to both natural and power-generated walls by ramming them and firing an energetic weapon. More than four hundred people were incapacitated without significant injury, either through application of Newter’s power or through Skitter’s use of insects.

Miss Militia remained onsite at the mall to aid National Guard and BBPD forces with triage, interviews, and processing. She supervised while several Merchant capes were taken into custody by the PRT and transported to PRTHQ for holding (see below). Due to the large number of suspects and inadequate holding facilities, not to mention the overburdened state of law enforcement, the decision was made to release all uninjured, non-powered citizens without processing except for confiscation of contraband including drugs and weapons. BBPD impounded all confiscated material. Injured individuals were triaged and transported to treatment centers at FEMA camps or hospitals as appropriate, or given basic treatment and told to approach health care workers in their home areas for follow up care. Red Cross units arrived at 0245 hours, and were indispensable in helping to triage and care for the many injured.

While activities at the shopping center continued, Battery led the search for Squealer and the capes who had apparently pursued her. She was accompanied by PRT troopers, Assault, and also Chariot. Chariot had been awake tinkering in his lab, and requested to have one of his gadgets tested by the tracking team. This was approved by Miss Militia in her capacity of Wards supervisor, but miscommunication led Battery’s team to believe that Chariot had been authorized to participate personally in the search. Chariot enthusiastically accepted that invitation to use his tech in the field.

As a movement Tinker, Chariot had built a device to retroactively detect motion by objects or groups of a defined size (see linked Review Application). This permitted the search team to track Squealer’s vehicle despite her cloaking technology. While enroute, the team encountered a building in which Skitter’s swarms were obviously active. PRT troopers attempted to investigate the site and met with no resistance except in a single hallway. They were unable to gain access until Battery used her ability to charge through the swarm and burst into the guarded room. The swarm quickly dispersed, leaving behind the remains of computer printouts that had been almost completely shredded or eaten by the insects. The recovered fragments have been submitted for analysis with a Thinker request flag.

Skitter’s swarm was encountered again in a second building later, but multiple explosions drew the team’s attention to the site of Squealer’s vehicle. Upon arriving, Labyrinths power was clearly in effect, and Skitter’s swarm blocked out all visuals of the area. Battery demanded the surrender of the opposing capes in connection with the deaths at the shopping center. Skitter refused, indicated that the Undersiders and Faultline would depart to treat their own wounded, and revealed that two Merchant capes were incapacitated and in need of medical attention. The swarm then departed, maintaining cover over a moving region that was presumed to include the escaping villains.

One PRT squad followed the departing capes from a distance, while the other squad and the Protectorate capes triaged those on site. Two dozen merchant gang members were found incapacitated through the combined actions of Gregor the Snail and Skitter, facilitated by yet another dramatic remodeling of the ground by Labyrinth. In addition, both Skidmark and Squealer were found unconscious in the wreckage of the vehicle. Skidmark had received only mild contusions and appeared drugged in a manner consistent with Newter’s power set. Squealer, on the other hand, had suffered traumatic removal of her right leg, severed at the thigh, and had lost a great deal of blood. She died under the care of PRT field medics before additional aid could arrive. Her wound showed evidence of First Aid including application of Gregor’s power, so it seems likely that this was an accidental death rather than an intentional murder. How the wound was inflicted is unclear.

Squealer’s vehicle had been dramatically shattered and sported extensive damage consistent with observed uses of Faultline’s power, though at an unusual level of intensity. Either the conflict was prolonged and violent or Faultline was uncharacteristically determined to destroy Squealer’s creation and/or gain access to something inside. This is explained by Skitter’s claim that the Merchants had abducted members of both groups, and that they needed to depart to treat wounded. While excessive, this entire conflict appears to have stemmed from the Merchants’ targeting of other capes who were then extracted by the two cooperating groups. The response is an unfortunate escalation, but is also understandable and even predictable given the personal nature of their conflict. At this time, we have no reason to attribute any of the night’s deaths to the Undersiders or to Faultline’s crew, with the clear exception of Squealer.

Due to the extreme violence observed so far and in light of the mortal injury Squealer had suffered, Battery resolved to remove Chariot from the scene and ordered him back to base under Assault’s supervision. Skitter’s swarm had departed in the direction of PRTHQ, so Assault led Chariot in the opposite direction to take a round-about route and avoid any encounters with the villains. While they walked, Chariot’s tracker picked up on the movements a number of pedestrians heading away from the scene. He argued that they might be useful witnesses to question for further information and convinced Assault to allow him to test his tracker on what was apparently the low end of its detection range.

Unfortunately, the pedestrians turned out to be Faultline and at least two other capes, who ambushed Assault and Chariot (see linked After Action Reports for details and speculation.) Assault secured Chariot and retreated with him immediately, but not before the majority of Chariot’s loadout was taken from him. It was later found to have all been destroyed on the same site. Assault nor Chariot suffered any injury. Given the course of their travel, it is presumed that Faultline’s team retreated to the Palanquin, and it is possible that the Undersiders accompanied them.

At 1100 hours, we received a report from the BBPD of an incident at the medical triage area of one of the FEMA camps where those unconscious from Newter’s power had been taken. A young man in civilian clothes woke up and demonstrated a devastating Blaster power that appeared partially uncontrolled. His power damaged equipment, collapsed the tent, and inflicted injuries on several others before he fled. He was not pursued. He is suspected to be a new trigger, but given the unexpected increase in the Merchants’ cape membership and the choice by several such as Squealer to do without a costumed identity, it is also possible he is a Merchant lieutenant or equivalent.

 **Notes and Recommendations** :

Successful capture of four Merchant capes is surprising, especially since one more died and three or four remain at large. Whereas there have been no more than three parahuman members of the gang prior to Leviathan’s attack, they apparently managed to recruit an additional five or six in the intervening weeks. We suspect that they are capturing or enticing the majority of recent triggers that occurred during and in the wake of the Endbringer attack. Even with the gang’s setback from this event, it is recommended that additional analysts be assigned to the PRT Merchant Taskforce. To summarize, their current known membership consists of:

_Captured:_

  * Skidmark
  * Mush
  * Jazzhands (a new Blaster, see New Parahuman File 2011-G6SY4)
  * Pits (a new Brute, see New Parahuman File 2011-DR5TQ)



_Deceased:_

  * Squealer



_At Large:_

  * Whirligig
  * Trainwreck
  * Whizzer (a new Mover, see New Parahuman File 2011-PKJ8N)
  * [presumed affiliation] unknown blaster, temporary designation Whiteout (see New Parahuman File 2011-43Y1U)



Squealer’s death is unfortunate, and is the first to be attributed to either villain group. The cape directly responsible is not yet known. Contacting Grue and/or Faultline for more information may bear fruit, as they have shown a desire to keep their groups below a certain threshold of violence in the past.

Of particular note is the observation that Skitter’s swarms were active simultaneously at distances of up to half a mile. This is far greater than her previously demonstrated range and is very worrying. She may be able to project force beyond the borders of the territory she claimed yesterday (see Incident Report by Battery). Skitter’s defense of that territory may have been what prompted the Merchants to abduct one of her teammates. On the other hand, Faultline has had no recent altercations with the group, so her involvement does not fit with that narrative.

Finally, Chariot should be given extra recovery time both in and out of the lab. His mental health after these events has not been evaluated, but it would be surprising if it had not affected him on top of the stress that all of the Wards are already experiencing.

_Submitted at 19:27 on June 6, 2011_


	10. Tip 2.1

Charlotte woke up in the luxury of having an actual mattress, with the prospect of a non-rainwater shower. She’d even been left clean clothes to wear that mostly fit, and a generic white mask to hide the top half of her face. Together, all of that had done a lot to ensure she started the day feeling cheerful, optimistic, and confident. It was mostly the shower, though.

The fact that she had woken up at 2pm and that Spitfire had appeared briefly to show her to the kitchen where food was ready and waiting (tomato soup dressed up with bite-size tuna melts and a handful of fresh grapes to go with it) might have had something to do with it too. The textures were glorious: smooth silk of soup that felt like a warm glow of courage when it reached her stomach; crispy grilled toast around gooey cheese and flaky soft tuna combined into a satisfying bite that didn’t need to be tasted to be enjoyed; then firm, plump grapes that popped under her teeth and splashed cool juice down her throat in refreshing contrast to the mushy slushiness of the rations that she’d been forcing herself to choke down for three weeks. If this was what being a mercenary could buy you in a post-Endbringer disaster zone, there might be something to be said for the profession.

Not that she was actually considering anything so idiotic as sticking around with either of the villain groups she’d run into, much less joining up with them. But since it would take a day or three to arrange her departure while they dealt with Coil and the threat he posed, she decided to enjoy her time as a beneficiary of their ill-gotten gains. Maybe she should take a second shower, just to renew the sensation of being comfortably clean in a warm towel. Her shoulders were a little sore still, probably from climbing around in that elevator shaft.

No. Physically, she was content enough. Instead, Charlotte started to plan for the future. There were measures to take if she was going to survive as a cape, doubly so as one without offensive powers. It had been over a year since any capes emerged within the Jewish community in the Bay. The last hero had been Persistence, and despite being a high level Brute she had only lasted four months before being injured badly enough she had to move out of the city. Before that, the two brothers from Temple Beth Jakob over near Captain’s Hill had triggered with some sort of ranged attack and tried to defend their neighborhood. They’d been labeled as villains and picked up by the PRT within a week. Charlotte assumed they were sitting in a cell somewhere, or possibly working for the Protectorate somewhere far from Brockton Bay. There had been rumors of at least one trigger since then, but the family had opted to move away before they could be directly targeted by the Empire.

If you were Jewish in Brockton Bay, human or parahuman, you didn’t succeed by being confrontational or flamboyant. Nor could you acquiesce and give space when it was demanded. Being too rigid in your opposition led you to be shattered with hammer blows, while being too pliant led you to be uprooted.

The problem was that… well, there were a lot of problems. Problem number one was the nature of Charlotte’s powers. Rather than being powerful herself, she empowered others. That type of Trump ability was usually incredibly potent. From a purely powers-focused perspective, Othala was the most valuable of the Empire’s cape assets. But unlike Othala or the other empowering Trumps she’d heard of like Teacher or Maggot, Charlotte had two big disadvantages. First, she only enhanced parahumans. She couldn’t make a normal person invulnerable or smart or strong or anything like that. No, she would have to surround herself with other capes in order to do any good. There weren’t any successful rogues in the area, and definitely none that would be able to make twice as much money by being a little better with their powers. There simply wasn’t an economy to support capes who went into business for themselves, and that was ignoring the possibility of being “recruited” by the more violent factions. She sure as hell wasn’t going to out herself, so New Wave was not an option. Unless, of course, the villains who had already seen her face took the option for a secret identity away from her.

But that brought up the next issue. Unlike Othala, who also enhanced others through touch, Charlotte’s boost didn’t seem to persist after she lost contact with someone. If she had to stand on the front lines to help then Charlotte would be useless to the fliers and brutes of New Wave. Although, maybe making Panacea a better healer would be a good option? She was already a walking miracle, so imagine what she could do with an even stronger ability. That was worth considering. Nobody ever attacked Panacea, so being her assistant could give Charlotte some very useful social armor. It might even be possible to hide what her power actually was and pass herself off as a healer instead.

No, that was stupid. Any ruse like that would fall apart immediately, possibly being maintained as a polite fiction if everyone liked that arrangement, but nobody would be fooled. It wasn’t worth the effort.

Aside from Panacea, though, the Protectorate was her only option. They’d lost enough heroes to Leviathan that they’d probably keep her here to support them in Brockton Bay. There was a chance Charlotte’s new powers would be enough to convince her zaydee that they really should move somewhere else, but if nothing in the past forty years had done that then this new wrinkle wasn’t likely to make much of an impact either. Unfortunately, it was clear that the Protectorate had no idea how to curb the Empire’s activities, much less directly damage the gang, and they weren’t likely to let Charlotte try to make a difference there.

As it was, the Empire had a lot of room to expand. Lung had been the real check on their power in recent years, and he was in the Birdcage now. Then again, between all of their identities being outed in May and the losses they’d taken against Leviathan, their capes were the most divided they’d been since Iron Rain’s death. Without Kaiser to enforce consolidation and silence detractors, they’d actually split into two factions. Supposedly, the groups that Purity and Hookwolf were leading couldn’t stand each other. With the capes divided like that, the general membership (and non-member bigots) didn’t have clear leadership and would be cautious or ineffectual. Was the landscape so altered that the heroes could actually counter them? Maybe it would be enough to just keep them at each other’s throats so they couldn’t target their usual victims, but if Charlotte were to boost the heroes would they be able to actually make inroads against the gang? Could she help contribute a useful perspective on how to approach things?

It was tempting.

On the other hand, the city really sucked even before it had been drowned by tidal waves and smashed by an actual sea monster. The thought that it could really recover from an Endbringer attack when it had been so dysfunctional even before that disaster? Charlotte was skeptical. Even if her mother and grandfather chose to stay, there wasn’t enough tying Charlotte here that she would necessarily throw herself into the insanity that was Brockton Bay’s cape conflict. Doing so was more likely to get them caught in the crossfire than anything. There were plenty of other places she could find capes to protect her and make use of her power. Maybe she could get a job helping the Protectorate’s think tank? But would her help be more valuable to capes that were relatively weak, or to those that had strong powers already? If she let the Protectorate relocate her, would she find herself in a small town with one or two minor capes, or would she be sent to Dragon’s workshop to help the greatest tinker in the world build things that were even more amazing? Did her boost even do anything for tinkers?

There were just too many questions. Panacea and the local Protectorate looked like the best options at the moment, but Charlotte didn’t understand what her own power could do well enough to make a decision now. She didn’t want to reveal anything else to the villains who had “extracted” her from the mall, but they already knew more about her power than she did, and trying to hide information from a Thinker was a fool’s game. If they were going to figure out what she could do anyway, Charlotte might as well learn everything she could at the same time. Faultline had agreed to share what she learned with Charlotte, so testing her power here made more sense than waiting, especially since this was probably the only time she’d have easy access to other parahumans before she had to commit to a path. The more she knew, the better informed she would be when it was time to make decisions and take actual control over her life.

Course determined, Charlotte made her way to the upstairs conference room that they had used earlier that morning. Time to see what these powers were all about.

\---0---

The silence was oppressive, and the whispering sound of pages turning when Tattletale reached a new page only served to underline how tense everyone in the room was acting. Charlotte had walked in on what appeared to be a high stakes study session, and she could read the mood well enough to know not to interrupt anything. A quick whispered exchange with Gregor told her that Labyrinth and Newter were still resting, and Skitter, Regent, and Imp had returned to their territories. Everyone else had been gathered here for several hours while Tattletale “helped with something.” It had been at least fifteen minutes since then, and in that time Tattletale had finished reading the thick stack of papers in front of her, then pulled out a half dozen individual sheets and reexamined them closely. Finally she sighed, looking up at Faultline.

“Honestly, I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Now see here,” Faultline growled, but Tattletale held up a hand.

“I’m not going back on our agreement. I’ve answered a lot of your questions already, and I will tell you everything I can about this contract and the organization it came from. What I am saying is that with respect to your biggest questions, I legitimately do not know what I _can_ tell you.”

“I believe I comprehend the difficulty,” said Gregor after a moment. “Please explain what would prevent you from telling us everything you currently know?”

“Yes,” said Tattletale, jabbing a finger in his direction. “Exactly! All of you read this before I looked at it, and you’ve doubtless drawn your own conclusions. Clearly you have prior information available that sent you searching for this, so you can’t be nearly as surprised as I am. But you also aren’t as scared as I am, so you probably haven’t considered the implications.”

“Which implications?” asked Shamrock. “We have a pretty damn good idea of what these bastards are up to.”

“Oh? Oh! You do, don’t you.” Lisa shook her head. “I’m talking about the very prominent secrecy clause in the front of the contract, and the penalties described for underpayment, breach of confidence, or other violations of the agreement. Those penalties include neutralization of a person and/or those they speak to if they share things they shouldn’t.”

“And you think they can carry through on this threat?” asked Faultline. “They obviously haven’t prevented us from acquiring this information or the vials it accompanied.”

“Oh, this ‘Cauldron’ obviously has the capability to make good on its contract terms. It’s an organization that sells superpowers. If it couldn’t enforce secrecy, you wouldn’t have had to go looking for this information at all, because it would be a household name. That they can enforce compliance from the capes they empower says that they have even more powerful abilities reserved for themselves. I don’t know if they monitor individuals under contract, track their merchandise, or maybe just simultaneously monitor all the conversations on the globe at once, but it is absolutely possible that if I say the wrong thing this whole building could end up vaporized.”

“What?” Charlotte’s good mood plummeted. “Just, what?”

“Hey, skinny,” greeted Tattletale. “I mean Aroma. Nice to see someone managed to sleep.”

“No, I mean it. What are you talking about? Artificial powers for sale? That exists?”

It was Faultline who answered. “It does. And we have reason to believe that the amnesiac Case 53s represent their failed experiments. We’ve been trying to track down information on them so we can discover something about where my people come from. Maybe even extract some compensation for what’s been done to them.”

“Oh.” So much for a relaxing three days hiding in a nightclub. Charlotte had no interest in learning the kind of secrets that people would kill to keep hidden. Thankfully, Tattletale didn’t seem ready to spill any damning details yet. Maybe Charlotte could escape before anything truly execution-worthy came to light.

“I’ll highlight the portions of text that sparked my power and that you should pay attention to, then after I’ve had a chance to think through this some more and apply my power to figuring out what is deadly and what isn’t, I’ll tell you everything that I can.”

“That’s acceptable,” said Faultline. Her voice sounded concerned, which Charlotte found appropriate and reassuring.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” said Tattletale, smirking. “This is only, like, the third most frightening think I’ve learned in the past two days. Compared to what I picked up when the Merchant triggered last night, this doesn’t even…” her smile vanished and her face paled. “Oh, crap. They’re connected.”

Tattletale’s eyes darted around the room, from the papers in front of her to Shamrock and Gregor, to a silver briefcase Charlotte hadn’t noticed in Faultline’s hand, finally lighting on Charlotte herself.

“It was you. You let me break through the Stranger effect. Holy shit, that’s huge.”

“Um, what?” Charlotte backed away towards the door as she found herself the focus of all eyes in the room. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that it’s time to find out exactly how your power works, and let you boost my Thinker ability to figure out some things that have been hidden in blindspots. You came up here because you wanted to do power testing, right? Right. Well, congrats. You get your wish.”


	11. Tip 2.2

A buzzing drew Charlotte’s attention away from the forking cracks of grapefruit scented power that Faultline was sending through the collection of junk items in the Palanquin’s basement. She looked to the side and saw a few hundred insects coalesce into a vaguely human shape.

_“Faultline. The Palanquin is being watched by Coil’s men. Two teams of five, nearer one at ground level to the south, further team on a rooftop to the northeast. I’m going to circle around to approach out of their sightline. ETA ten minutes.”_

“Thank you, Skitter.” Faultline turned and called up the stairs. “Gregor! Put everyone on alert.”

Charlotte almost corrected her to say that Skitter couldn’t hear through her swarm, but caught Tattletale’s eye and thought better of it. Villains wouldn’t appreciate having their limitations revealed like that.

“I think we’re done with this round of tests anyway,” said Tattletale. All three of them started making their way up to the ground floor.

Charlotte hoped that they were learning something useful. It was obvious that she allowed capes to do things with their powers that they couldn’t before, but there seemed to be no pattern in the new capability. At least, not one Charlotte could see.

In Faultline’s case, she could chain fissures together end to end, and apparently also bypass the Manton limit that kept her from severing things that were alive. Things like bamboo or grass …or Squealer’s leg. That realization had almost sent Charlotte into a panic again, in part because of Faultline’s claim that she hadn’t intended to dismember the Tinker inside of her tank. From the way she said it, that was supposed to be comforting. Charlotte very definitely did not feel safer knowing that people around the mercenary could accidentally lose limbs any time Charlotte touched her, especially since by definition Charlotte would be one of those nearby people.

With Charlotte’s boost, Spitfire had gained the ability to modulate the temperature of her flames, in a range that felt like it went from “campfire” to “blast furnace.” That change had registered to Charlotte as a variation in the sharpness of the wasabi flavor. Spitfire also reported that she felt like she could expel her fire from elsewhere on her body besides just her mouth, but since the fireproof suit that made up her costume didn’t really accommodate any other places for fire to emerge, they hadn’t tested that augmentation yet.

And, of course, there was Tattletale who had sat in a shifting cloud of rosemary while spouting off a conspiracy theory about aliens and exotic physics and possible shadow governments that sounded to Charlotte like some of the worst pieces of internet paranoia strung together in a semi-coherent narrative. Tattletale admitted that she had only figured out the broad strokes, and that she needed more data points to put more of the puzzle together. Charlotte figured it probably didn’t matter to her personally, if it hadn’t been an issue for the thirty years since powers became a thing, and she could wait to think about it until there was a more complete picture. One that hopefully sounded saner than the ravings of a sovereign citizen crackpot scared of mind control.

In several hours of testing they had also confirmed that Charlotte’s enhancement only lasted as long as she was touching another cape, but that in her case “touch” did not require skin contact. Gloves, armor, and other clothing didn’t block her power, though a stapler, a phone, and a water bottle all had. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but it was superpowers. Not making sense was sort of the point.

Back on the main level of the Palanquin, Charlotte crossed the dance floor and picked a barstool. Faultline went off to talk to her team or ready defenses or do something else that required striding purposefully away. Tattletale meandered aimlessly through the room, focus intent on her phone as she sent message after message. Charlotte idly kicked her legs, wondering if she was going to be caught in the middle of another cape fight. Watching the club didn’t necessarily mean preparing to attack it, right? The way Skitter and Tattletale described him, Charlotte got the impression that Coil was completely amoral, endlessly controlling, and liked collecting enslaved capes in his basement. Sort of a villain’s villain if they gave out prizes for depraved scheming.

Charlotte was skeptical. In her experience, evil looked a lot more like white businessmen glorifying Auschwitz than a scowling mastermind twirling their moustache from the control panel of a death ray. She obviously wouldn’t volunteer herself to be captured just to find out if Coil was as horrible as they said, but she would remember that the people telling her about Coil had already robbed banks and attacked heroes themselves. Bastions of integrity they were not, so maybe dump a heaping tablespoon of salt on their words before accepting anything they say.

It wasn’t long before Skitter walked in through the door to the kitchen. She had time to nod a greeting to Charlotte before Tattletale made a beeline to her and started peppering her with questions. The upshot, or so Charlotte gathered, was that Coil’s mercenaries weren’t moving from their observation posts, and didn’t have additional backup in the area.

Gradually, Faultline and her team gathered by the bar as well, while Skitter kept watch on the situation. Even Newter and Labyrinth came down from their rooms. Except for being bright orange, Newter looked pretty normal. He was shirtless, but had an unzipped windbreaker on over the bandages covering his shoulder and torso. The skin around the bandages was a strangely mottled yellowish black, like the bruising had been palette swapped by a Boston Bruins fan.

Nothing was happening, but everyone was tense. After about ten minutes of waiting and discussing things in low voices, Spitfire plopped down in the stool next to Charlotte. In a bright tone she asked, “So, have you come up with a real name yet? We keep calling you Aroma, but someone’s already using that name in Flagstaff.”

“Uh, no. Haven’t really thought about it.”

“Well, let’s see if we can come up with some ideas. No sense just sitting here doing nothing.”

It was a blatant attempt at distraction, and Charlotte seized it. “How did you decide on your name?”

“Eh, I know it sounds stupid because my power is literally spitting fire, but that part of it was actually just coincidence. Sort of. See, my great grandfather was an RAF pilot. I grew up on stories about him flying in the Battle of Britain and dogfights over the Mediterranean. He flew a Hawker Hurricane most often, but towards the end he piloted a Supermarine Spitfire, and that’s what he was in when he was shot down over Malta. When I was little and imagined being a cape I always named myself after one of his units or planes, so when it actually happened and my powers matched the Spitfire model so well, the name was sort of a given.”

Charlotte looked around. She’d gathered that Gregor, Newter, and Shamrock didn’t have non-cape names, so it would be rude to ask them. Faultline was talking to Skitter, and she didn’t really want to give Tattletale an excuse to talk, so instead she asked, “What sort of names would you suggest for me?”

“Well, we’ve learned a bit about your powers, so you could pick something to describe what they do. Maybe Boost or Enhance or Empower?”

“I know,” said Newter. “You help powers operate at their best, so how about Peak or Climax?”

“No!” Charlotte glared at him.

“Shut up, Newter,” Spitfire shouted good-naturedly. “Just because you gave yourself a name with ‘accidental’ innuendo doesn’t mean you can foist one of those idiotic PR hells on our new friend.”

“Why did you select Aroma first?” asked Gregor. “What is it you want out of a name?”

Lisa already knew the answer, so it wasn’t worth hiding it. “It’s mostly because I can smell the powers I boost. Each cape has their own unique scent. When I picked the name, I only knew about the smell part, not the Trump part.”

“Huh,” said Newter. “Good smells?”

Charlotte equivocated. “Some good, some bad. So far Whizzer’s was the worst.”

He laughed. “Hah, yeah, I guess Merchants stink no matter what? Awesome.”

“So,” put in Spitfire, “synonyms for smells? Aroma is a good one, but how about Fragrance? Perfume? Incense? Or you could try translating into other languages. Do you know any?”

“Hebrew,” said Charlotte. “And a little Spanish.”

“Hmm, I don’t think you want to advertise your Hebrew connections in this town with something so blatant as a cape name. Maybe we could find something else.”

Gregor was tapping his chin. “As desirable as your Trump power is, that cape sense is also a powerful Thinker ability. You probably want a name that does not advertise either your abilities too directly. A more abstract name evoking the image you want to present might be better.”

This devolved into a series of suggestions that got progressively worse and more ridiculous. Eventually, they were interrupted by Skitter.

“Both teams are backing off. They left their observation gear behind, and are moving quickly toward the center of town. I don’t know what that means.”

Tattletale frowned. “Either we won here in his other timeline, and Coil scrubbed their mission, or something else grabbed his attention. If they left their non-combat equipment behind, I’m guessing it’s the second one. Maybe the Chosen are attacking one of his assets?”

Nobody else had a better idea.

It was long past dark, and Shamrock suggested they eat together while waiting to see if Coil’s men returned. She and Faultline retired to the kitchen to start preparing a meal while the conversation continued.

Charlotte was trying to enjoy the slightly overcooked spaghetti that they had produced when Skitter leapt to her feet.

_“Someone is coming.”_

“More mercenaries?” asked Tattletale.

_“No. Woman in a dress, alone. Barefoot.”_

“Shamrock, overwatch,” ordered Faultline, and Shamrock jogged up the steps to a balcony, producing a large rifle from somewhere.

_“She’s almost here, approaching the main doors.”_

BOOM

A pressure wave thumped into Charlotte’s stomach, like sitting too close to those big fireworks. Plywood covered windows shook and one even shattered despite its covering. When Charlotte looked, the front doors of the club were gone, blasted off of their hinges, and bright flames licked the doorway.

Standing in that empty space was a woman with wild brown hair. Her red dress was tattered but not at all singed despite the heat shimmer around her feet. Her green eyes seemed to glow, but whether with an inner light or simply reflecting the fire around her, Charlotte couldn’t say. Two tracks of cigarette burns marred the woman’s cheeks, running vertically down from each eye.

At the other end of the bar, Labyrinth gave a fearful, nearly inaudible gasp. “Mimi.”

Burnscar cocked her head to one side and smiled, idly igniting one of her hands. “Hello, Elle.”


	12. Tip 2.3

Before he died, Charlotte’s father had held a number of different jobs. One that lasted longer than most had been a position as custodian at Brockton Bay University. On Saturdays she sometimes went with him and did her homework in the atriums or lecture halls. When she was eleven or twelve, she’d followed him through the biology wing of the science building, and he’d told her about some of the equipment. There were shakers and incubators for culturing bacteria, a big glass wash that was about ten times as big as their dishwasher at home, a bunch of different types of microscopes, and something she hadn’t understood well that zapped cells with electricity for some reason. It had all seemed pretty cool to her. Then he showed her the autoclave.

Her first thought at seeing the door open into the wall was that it would be an excellent spot for hide and seek, a small cubby that could easily accommodate a person or three, behind a panel that looked difficult to move. Charlotte hated her younger self for that thought, since it had colored everything she’d then learned about the machine.

There was a strong metal door as tall as Charlotte had been, sealed with eight strong clamps and designed with interlocks so that the door couldn’t be opened until a cycle was entirely complete. Behind that door, creaking open on motorized hinges, was a metal-lined box where lab materials or biohazard trash were placed before being sealed into the dark claustrophobic chamber. In the sides and roof of that box sat holes, ready to inject hissing, superheated steam until the interior of the autoclave reached temperatures that could utterly sterilize anything inside, snuffing out all life no matter how small it made itself. And attached to each piece, a sticky length of seemingly normal tape that would darken when heated, coming out branded with black lines to confirm that the box’s killing work was done.

Young Charlotte had woken screaming from nightmares every night for weeks, imagining herself trapped inside an autoclave with mist hissing in from the walls and the temperature gradually, painfully, inexorably rising. It was the union of the twin horrors she’d heard of in the accounts of ovens and gas chambers in the Nazi’s extermination camps. She became convinced that the Empire Eighty Eight were secretly sponsoring the university’s research so they could have access to the autoclaves that were just the right size to fit a Jewish girl inside.

Since that time Charlotte’s rationality had returned, but she still had a visceral aversion to science labs. The autoclave still occasionally featured in her nightmares.

Surrounded by the raging torrent of flames that had engulfed the dance floor of the Palanquin, those nightmares had come to life with a vengeance. Burnscar’s cackling voice wove through the crackling of flames and the cracking of timbers to give the deadly heat the malice that would consume everything with unquenchable hunger.

Charlotte ran, stumbled, fell, and scrambled back to her feet. There was a gap by basement stairs, and she remembered seeing a second exit down there. Before she reached it, a surge of nutmeg preceded Burnscar stepping out of nothing as the conflagration expanded into her path.

Charlotte was already diving to the side, narrowly avoiding the grasping fingers that singed the air around them. She heard the report of Shamrock’s rifle again, and Burnscar jerked before teleporting away.

The smoke was making Charlotte cough, but even crawling on the ground the air was hot enough to sear her throat. Burnscar had already blocked her three times when she tried to get out of the burning deathtrap that the Palanquin had become. There was nowhere left where she could escape. She wasn’t a fighter, but some of the others were. She’d have a better chance at surviving this if she was close to them, so Charlotte started crawling back across the dance floor toward the bar.

Labyrinth’s team had tried to protect her, but as noble as it was to put yourself between a member of the Slaughterhouse Nine and their target, that didn’t actually do any good if that murderer was also a teleporter who could appear anywhere.

Spitfire had been the first to fall. It turns out that fighting fire with fire is actually a monumentally stupid idea, especially when one of the pyrokinetics in question is completely fireproof and gets more mobile with every new thing set ablaze. Newter had tried to launch spittle at Burnscar to knock her out, but again, teleporter. Instead, Tattletale had been caught in his line of fire and collapsed against a burning table before Skitter hauled her away behind the bar. Meanwhile, Burnscar had tagged Newter with a thrown fireball that blasted through his shoulder bandages and seared his skin black. He was still fighting through the obvious pain to try to help his team, but could never get close enough to do anything before Burnscar teleported away.

Faultline, Gregor, and Shamrock were working together smoothly, with Faultline (covered in Gregor’s slime to help resist the flames) harrying Burnscar hand-to-hand, Gregor dousing the flames to deny certain angles of approach, and Shamrock shooting her whenever she appeared. She’d taken at least four bullets by now, but it didn’t seem to be slowing her down any.

A concussive blast detonated behind Faultline, launching her through the air and knocking Gregor back against the bar. They were hopelessly outclassed. This was the Slaughterhouse Nine! How could they survive this?

Burnscar materialized from the flames where Gregor had been standing and shot a large ball of fire at him. Even stunned as he was, Gregor managed to block it with his own glob of slime. She didn’t seem to notice or care, instead stepping towards Labyrinth leaving burning footprints in her wake.

“I missed you, Elle. It’s good to see you again.” Idly she reached out and seared a handprint into the side of Gregor’s face. He screamed and fell. Another rifle shot, and this time Charlotte saw the impact in Burnscar’s back where a neat hole appeared in the dress. Burnscar stumbled from the impact, but didn’t collapse or yell or hardly even bleed. She launched a concussive blast up at the balcony, forcing Shamrock to evade and flee.

Burnscar turned back to Labyrinth, and opened her mouth to speak. Skitter suddenly launched herself over the bar, driving a knife into Burnscar’s eye and bearing her to the ground.

Any relief that Charlotte felt was short lived, burned to death by the sound of Burnscar’s laugh.

“Nice try, bug girl. Bonesaw has made us tougher than that.”

One hand wrapped around Skitters throat and wreathed itself in fire. Skitter thrashed, bashing at the hilt of the knife that was still sticking out of Burnscar’s face, but it failed to penetrate any deeper. Burnscar rolled over on top of Skitter, choking her one handed.

“I’m also immune to most poisons, like those venoms your bugs have been trying to use. You lose.”

Another crack of Shamrock’s rifle knocked Burnscar’s head to one side and she fell off of Skitter, but she still rose to her feet.

There was nothing that Charlotte could do to stop this monster, and there was no way out of this heated box, and the pressure was just building. If only they could extinguish some of the flames they might be able to run away.

Illogically, Charlotte’s mind jumped to Labyrinth’s rain-scented power, in a fire-versus-water association. But, on second thought, that wasn’t such an impossible idea. Labyrinth had made that fountain at the shopping center. Maybe she could summon water from the worlds she created. She changed course slightly, angling towards where Labyrinth was kneeling beside Gregor, pressing a cloth to his face while tears coursed down her cheeks.

Burnscar disappeared for a few moments, then returned through the kitchen doorway, walking slowly around the bar. Faultline had regained her feet by this point, and she staggered over to interpose herself in front of Labyrinth. “I won’t let you hurt her.”

Burnscar laughed. “I won’t hurt her. Elle is my friend. You, on the other hand…” She gathered two handfuls of flame and drew them back to either side, preparing to launch them forward to obliterate the woman before her. In that moment, Charlotte grasped Labyrinth’s foot and fresh rain flooded through the Palanquin and the surrounding streets.

The flames dimmed and shadows flickered as walls emerged from the floor. Padded walls with white quilting stabbed through with broken shards of glass. Shabby doorframes between each room, wrapped in rusted barbed wire. Windows between cells and into the outside, blocked with sharp bars that Charlotte could see grow visibly as they extended from the top and bottom like a closing jaw. Clanking chains sounded from nearby, and wind rushed through carrying an anguished moan and fanning the flames. The padded wall behind Burnscar burst alight, and her silhouette against it shrieked and contorted.

“No! NO! Not this place!”

Labyrinth’s whimper was soft, but Charlotte could hear it all the same. “Please, not the bad place. I can’t reach anywhere else. I don’t want to get lost in the bad place.”

Charlotte withdrew her hand and the scent of rain faded, but Labyrinth apparently didn’t need a boost to sustain this hellscape, only to seed her power through the area and bring it into being so quickly. The torture asylum remained.

“I thought you made beautiful places, now,” Burnscar screeched. “That’s why I was happy when the others chose Brockton Bay. I could see you again, see what you’d learned and accomplished. But now you plunge me back into this PLACE!” With a snarl she launched blast after blast at every surface in sight, and now the flames spread with a mad intensity, consuming cloth and heating barbed wire to a branding iron red, even melting it in places.

In the wash of heat, Charlotte could only think of getting out. Apparently the others had the same thought, because Faultline and Labyrinth were already dragging Gregor by his arms, trying to pull him away from the rapidly spreading inferno. Newter stumbled after them, and Charlotte staggered along behind. Another concussive blast landed in their midst, knocking everyone off their feet. Burnscar stepped from the smoke, a burning hatred in her eyes.

Charlotte pushed herself to her feet and grabbed Newter’s elbow to help him up. Maybe they could flee while Burnscar was focused on Labyrinth. Instead, Newter collapsed with a dopey smile on his face. The composted orange peel scent Charlotte had felt from him burst off of his skin, filling the air with aerosol droplets in a noxious cloud.

Charlotte gasped, gagged, and felt herself drifting into pink jello and joy.


	13. Tip 2.A

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A significant chunk of the dialogue in this chapter is either taken directly or adapted from Interlude 11.g and should be attributed to Wildbow.

Aisha’s fingers massaged the second round of conditioner into Alec’s wavy hair, expertly untangling a few knotted strands.

“It’s important to do them in the right order,” she said aloud. “My hair is naturally amazing, but the correct products can make it feel so much nicer. Plus, having someone give me a scalp massage at the same time is super relaxing.” Her hands moved lower, knuckling area behind his ears then proceeding slowly the curve of his neck, working out bits of tension.

After a few minutes Alec leaned his head back and Aisha poured warm water over his scalp, washing out the conditioner out into the basin. She toweled his hair dry, voice taking on a lecturing tone. “And that is step five. If you do it correctly then you barely even have to brush it. Any questions?”

Aisha felt control of her mouth and throat return to her and smirked at him. “Yeah. How many bad hair days did it take to come up with this routine? And do you have pictures?”

“Hush, you,” her voice said again, Alec seizing back control.

Then, in his own voice he added, “I don’t get bad hair days. That’s a problem for people with less natural beauty. I still look good no matter what my hair is doing.”

Alec ran his own fingers through his hair while Aisha’s body moved to collect the towel draped over his shoulders to protect his costume’s frilly tunic. Blouse. Whatever. The door opened behind her and Janice, a thirty-something muscular white lady in tight jeans and wearing a gun at her hip, walked in carrying a plate of potato chips and Little Debbie snacks. Alec snagged a mini chocolate crème thing and stuffed it in his mouth before grabbing an already opened bag of sea salt and vinegar chips.

With his mouth full now, he used Janice’s voice to say, “What would you like?” while she held out the plate to Aisha.

Aisha’s right arm became hers again and she selected a bag of limited edition sour dill flavored chips, since they looked kinda weird but not gross. Dill pickles and potato chips went together as sides at sandwich shops, so combining them into one food wasn’t an awful idea. Not like those ones she’d tried before that were supposedly “mesquite rib BBQ” flavored. Those had been disgusting.

Alec walked through the door, and Aisha’s body followed him out into the carpeted entertainment room that held pride of place in his base, sporting one of the most massive television screens Aisha had ever seen. Alec was someone who knew what they wanted out of the villain lifestyle, which was what resonated most with Aisha. The rest of the Undersiders were focused on reputation or fights or junk like that, but Alec actually tried to enjoy the fruits of their efforts. What was the point of being a villain if you had to work hard for what you got just like a normal schmo? The whole point of breaking the rules was to make things easier on yourself. Alec got that.

“So,” said Janice from behind her. “I figured we could try a rematch with that game Skitter interrupted last night. You can pick your character and we’ll see how your reflexes hold up against Karl. He’s kinda shit at hand-eye coordination. If you win you get to play against Janice. If not, you can still play against Janice but I’ll get the broken controller out.”

“Fuck you,” said Aisha when Alec gave her the chance to speak. “It’s you playing the game anyway, so it’s not as if losing means that _I_ suck.”

“Yeah,” said Alec. “But they’re _your_ thumbs. It’s not like I make half of my brain smart and half of it stupid when I play like this.”

She tried to flip him off, but her hands were busy switching on the game. She settled down next on a couch with Alec beside her. Karl, an ex-Nazi ganger, was sitting on the floor, while Janice walked off somewhere else.

It was a really weird sensation, doing things that she didn’t mean to and acting with different posture and body language than she was used to. She’d only let Alec try this a couple days ago, after seeing how things had gone down with Shadow Stalker and wondering what that would be like. More than anything she’d been surprised at the way she didn’t really feel violated. Maybe it was just that she’d volunteered for this, but having her hands run over her body just felt like tracing her own figure, even if it was someone else directing where she touched. She was even a bit disappointed that Alec hadn’t done anything weird or even remotely intimate with her, since he was pretty good looking. When she’d asked him afterward he just shrugged and said, “Been there, done that.”

They had learned very quickly that he couldn’t activate her power without immediately losing control of her body when he forgot she existed. So she had insurance against him if he ever did make her do something that deserved a kick in the head. If Brian ever found out about this, she was totally claiming to have thought of that ahead of time. What was that term they used to talk about arrangements like that? Something smart sounding. It was… Mutual Asskicking, or something close to it but with fancier words.

Refocusing on the game, Aisha thought that this was another unexpected benefit of letting someone else pilot her body. She could get distracted and let her mind wander to whatever caught her attention, and meanwhile her body would just go right on being productive and on task, which in this case amounted to absolutely trashing Karl’s elf dude with the big dragon thing Aisha had picked to as her character. When the game ended she found herself in control again.

“Sup?”

“You need to pee,” said Alec. “You can manage to do that on your own, right? Or do you need some handholding to remember how?”

Aisha flipped him off, which was actually fairly satisfying after the past couple times hadn’t worked, and beelined for the bathroom.

Washing her hands after, Aisha sneezed at the smell of the soap. Alec had these scented moisturizing soaps made with honey or some shit like that. What was even the point? Just wash your hands with regular soap, don’t try to smell like a pretentious ass.

Two loud cracks drew her attention. It sounded like the gunshots had come from just outside the building. She moved to open the door, but before she even touched the handle she was struck by a wave of doubt. Should she get involved? Guns could kill even if they weren’t intentionally aimed at you, and her only power was going unnoticed. Something violent like that could easily end her by accident. A series of four more gunshots sounded from even closer. Aisha couldn’t bring herself to care.

She looked at her reflection, noting the high cheekbones and long neck. She hated how much those features made her look like her mother, the woman who brought home a new boyfriend every month. The woman who hadn’t noticed Aisha half the time even before she got powers, and spent the other half resenting her daughter for a litany of shortcomings. Most of those failures, like Aisha’s defective brain, weren’t even Aisha’s fault. Everyone knows that taking drugs during pregnancy screws up the kid, but mom didn’t care about the baby she was carrying now, and she sure as hell wouldn’t have cared about a loser like Aisha.

Even now that she’d triggered Aisha felt worthless. As Imp, she was the last member of the team to join, and that put her on the outside. On the bottom rung. And of course Grue was an overprotective asshole who would never let her do anything if he could help it. A little sob escaped her as she thought about the useless burden she was to have driven Brian into villainy as the only way to get her away from parents that didn’t want her in the first place. How sucky was that? And now anything she did do to try to help went unnoticed because her goddamn power was to be unacknowledged even when she did amazing shit. If she was gone, nobody on the team would probably even notice that they’d ever had a fifth member. Nobody saw her while she was alive, power or not, so nobody would care if she was dead. She didn’t have any reason not to just …

The suicidal thoughts dimmed as her body moved by itself, opening the door and striding out of the bathroom. The thoughts weren’t gone, just overshadowed by the act of doing something purposeful, despite the listlessness she felt riding along as a passenger in her own mind. Her body crossed the room and stood close to Alec, who was flanked by Janice and Karl.

The door on the opposite wall opened, and a white girl listening to a walkman stepped through. She had a red streak in her dark hair that mirrored Aisha’s own strand of purple, but there the similarities ended. This girl was dressed down but wore obviously classy clothes with a practiced style. Aisha knew that people thought she dressed trashy, but now she felt it. She was nothing compared to this pretty girl. This girl wasn’t someone who would be ignored like Aisha was.

“Jean-paul,” the girl spoke. “ _Ҫa va?”_

“It’s Alec now. Regent in costume.”

“Alec,” she smiled. “Still sounds French. I approve, little brother.”

“Cherie. What the fuck?”

“If we’re changing our names, I’m going by Cherish. I wanted to make an entrance.”

“Man.”

“You’ll find others.”

“Fuck.”

Little brother? Jean-paul? What was going on here? Aisha felt suspicion bordering on paranoia. Who was Alec really?

“Cut it out, Cherie,” Alec said, “I’m controlling them.”

“If I remember right, you lose control if they’re hit by enough emotion,” she smiled.

The way she said that sent Aisha into a blind panic. Despite being locked away from her body, her arms and legs both started to shiver.

“If I’m farther away. Seriously, stop. It’s irritating.” To Aisha’s left, Karl fell to his knees, hands clenched.

“While I’m doing this, you can’t tell them to attack me.”

“Unless I’ve gotten stronger over the past few years,” Alec answered.

Janice drew her gun, but wavered indecisively between pointing it at Cherish or at herself.

Aisha’s fear vanished, replaced by crushing grief, then by wild ecstatic joy. Both seemed to paralyze her despite Alec’s power. As Aisha bounced from rage back to grief, she felt a tiny kernel of hatred for Cherish begin to coalesce underneath the more overwhelmingly intense emotions.

“Seems we’re at a stalemate,” said Cherish.

“Maybe,” replied Alec. “I’m not the best when it comes to strategy, but I’m thinking… I’m going to win here. Eventually. Your power wears off and your targets build immunity pretty quickly. You can’t run without me getting control over my people and sending them after you, and if you _stay_ , I can try doing this.”

Cherish’s arm jerked.

“I still remember how to hijack your body, pretty much. I’m thinking I could get control over you pretty fast if I tried.”

“I think we’d both be happier if you didn’t.” She reached inside her jacket, and Alec made her hand seize up. “It’s cool,” she said. She winced with pain, but managed to bring an eighteen-inch metal case into plain view, dangling from a thick cord around her neck. “See this? It’s a bomb. Very simple. A block of explosives rigged to a timer. Any time I call the right number, the timer will reset. I did make the mistake of letting my phone battery die, but I figure I’ve still got a couple of minutes. If you keep me here for any longer than that, I go kablooie.”

“Is that a threat? Sounds like a win for me.”

“You’ll probably get blown up as well. Or maimed,” she smiled.

“I could walk away.”

“And lose control over your minions as you get further away? Please do. I can make the call when you’re gone.”

“What even is this, Cherish? Why are you here? Did the old man send you?”

Cherish scoffed. “As if. No, though you should know that things got pretty shitty at home after you left. Daddy got really overprotective, angry. It sucked. Sucked worse when we couldn’t find you.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay, because I get my revenge now. I’ve moved on to bigger and better things. I joined the Nine.”

“Well,” said Alec. “That was stupid.”

“No, it’s _exciting_. But the point is that for my payback? I’ve nominated you for the Nine.”

“Not interested.”

“Doesn’t matter. You get nominated, you’re tested no matter what you want… and a few of the Nine don’t want to have two Vasils on the same team. Shatterbird hates my guts, for some reason. Crawler doesn’t respect me. Jack thinks it would be boring. They won’t be testing you to see if you’re mean enough, bloodthirsty enough, creative enough. They’re just going to try to kill you.”

“Fuck,” Alec said.

“Have fun with that,” she smiled. “Now we’re even.”

“Fuck you. That’s not even at all! I leave home, so you arrange to have me killed by some of the scariest fuckers on this side of Earth?”

“Yep,” she smiled.

Alec reached out and grabbed the gun out of Janice’s hand turning to point it at his sister, but Cherish had started running before he even moved and he only got a single shot off before she tackled him to the ground. Beneath her current apathy, Aisha’s hate grew a little more.

Alec tried to reach for his scepter, but Cherish had already grabbed it first and tossed it aside. Right at Aisha’s feet. Cherish pinned Alec’s hands behind his head and slapped his face. At the same moment, Alec activated Aisha’s power and she regained control of her body. Still fighting the apathy, she reached for that kernel of hate and let it drive her as she picked up the scepter, clicking sparks from its tip and reaching out to jab Cherish.

The girl shrieked, and Aisha froze again, struck with wave after wave of fear. Even having just peed, she felt a trickle of urine trail down her leg as her bladder tried to empty.

“How did you do that?” she asked.

“Do what, you lunatic?”

“Not you, your invisible friend.”

“I never did get your humor, Cherie. What are you talking about?”

“Wait, that’s real confusion you’ve got going there, bro. So, not just invisibility, huh?”

Aisha’s aimless fear found a very solid reason to crystalize around. Cherish could sense her, even with her power active. She tried to turn off her Stranger field so that Alec would remember her, but suppressing her power took focus and the terror she was feeling kept her helplessly in fight or flight mode.

“Looks like you’ve managed to create some actual connections, Jean-paul. A girlfriend, maybe? No. I’d call it kinky, but there’s nothing romantic between you. You have friends, I guess? A team? Looks like you kept the family tradition of dysfunctional relationships.”

Alec stayed silent. Cherish looked straight at Aisha, and her emotions were her own for a moment. Her hate and anger swelled and she stepped toward Cherish brandishing the scepter. Her step faltered then, since there was nothing to hurt in front of her, nobody of any consequence. Just a couch, a television, and a girl with red in her hair. Aisha turned around and saw Alec. Her rage peaked and she was suddenly jabbing the tazer into his side watching him writhe on the ground. But a little incapacitation wasn’t good enough, so she tossed the scepter away, dropping onto his chest with her hands wrapped around his throat. She squeezed, remembering the dealers that sold to her mom, the boyfriends who leered at her and made their apartment and awful place to be, the Empire thugs that chased her and almost caught her when she triggered. Somehow it was all Alec’s fault and she _squeezed_.

Then the hate washed out of her, leaving her empty and she rolled off his coughing, choking body to lie listless on the floor.

“That is _very_ interesting,” said Cherish. She walked over to Janice and fished a cell phone out of the woman’s pocket. Dailing a number and hearing it connect, she sighed in relief. Then the pretty white girl, the one Aisha adored and would give anything to be like, the one with an almost matching streak in her hair, beckoned. “Come with me. I have some people I’d like to introduce you to.”

Happily, Aisha followed her out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not what I had planned when I initially put Imp and Regent in the same place for Cherish’s visit, but then I went back and reread Cherish’s interlude. It turns out her powers in canon are a lot more versatile and potent than I had remembered, and the power interaction between her and Regent isn’t as simple as I’d thought. Unfortunately for Imp, the workarounds and loopholes I’d envisioned for her and Regent to exploit don’t actually make sense when going up against canon Cherish. She is much more worthy of her spot in Jack’s little murderhobo brigade than I gave her credit for, and is a far more capable villain than the more easily defeated version I used when I plotted out the original scene. 
> 
> There are plenty “it gets worse” moments in this fic that are my fault, and a few of those have even been planned from the beginning because they helped inspire Charlotte’s story. This right here is not one of those. You can blame Imp’s current predicament on Wildbow for creating such horrifying bad guys. Seriously, Cherish is messed up. It was uncomfortably satisfying to read Alec’s little foreshadowing moment when he tells her that she’s destined for a Bad Ending because she was dumb enough to voluntarily join the Nine. Butcher XV got one of those worse-than-death fates that canon Worm is so good at delivering, and after reading her POV again I can’t say she wasn’t asking for it.


	14. Tip 2.4

As the euphoria faded and Charlotte came back to herself, three distinct pains made themselves known. First was a general soreness in her legs and back that felt like she’d just finished the first long skating practice of the season, before her muscles had gotten used to it again. She’d done something to exert herself far more than her body was ready for. Second was a throbbing ache on her right bicep. When she tried to touch it her fingers brushed at gauze wrapping around her arm.

“Hey,” came a raspy voice. “You waking up?”

Charlotte’s head lolled around and she squinted at the indistinct figure leaning over her.

“Hxxl pld,” was what came out of her mouth before she descended into a coughing fit. And that was the third pain, rough sandpaper scraping up and down her throat with every breath, her tongue and palate feeling stabbing needles when she tried to speak.

“I know. We all inhaled a lot of smoke. Try to breathe slow, and we’ve got some hard candies to suck on. It’s helping a little.” She handed Charlotte a green jolly rancher.

Charlotte finally recognized the girl speaking to her as Skitter. Taylor, since her mask was off. Reaching up, Charlotte felt at her own face, which was also uncovered.

“Yeah. Your mask was lost in the fire,” croaked Taylor. “With all the injuries from Burnscar’s attack, identities took a back seat to trying to treat everyone. You can mask up again if you want before going out there. That’s up to you, though; everyone else that’s awake has already unmasked to each other under Truce. With the Nine in town, we all have to work together.”

Still not trusting her voice, Charlotte nodded and looked around. They were in an apartment bedroom that had been decorated by someone under the age of seven whose favorite animal and color and word were all “unicorn.” One of the walls was heavily water damaged, and cool night air was blowing in through a pane-less window, but the power was on and the lights worked. The bed Charlotte lay on was dry and plush. And a bit crowded, with the various stuffed toys that populated its covers waiting for someone that probably wasn’t coming back to collect them, even if she was alive somewhere.

Very softly, careful not to aggravate her throat further, Charlotte whispered, “Awake?” She hoped Taylor would understand her question. Who had seen her face? How many more villains had she been outed to? Then, because it seemed obvious but it was important and she really wanted to be sure, she added, “Safe?”

“Safe as we can be,” answered Taylor. “There’s no indication that anyone else was with Burnscar or has come after her since then. It’s close to five a.m. now. Everybody made it out of the fire, but Newter, and Tattletale haven’t woken up yet. Gregor did technically see your face, but he was in enough pain that I doubt he paid any attention. He’s also asleep now.”

Charlotte mentally went through the list of capes she had met. If everyone but Newter had seen her face, then there wasn’t much use in hiding who she was. She would have to find some leverage to counter what the two teams of villains kept gaining over her. Maybe she could contact the heroes somehow without anyone knowing? It was a long shot, but now would her best chance to try if Tattletale was still asleep, so she didn’t have very long. She started to plan things out.

She got halfway through step one before her mind caught on something Taylor had said. The Nine hadn’t “come after” Burnscar yet.

“Here?!” she rasped, eliciting another coughing fit. When it finally subsided she tried again in a whisper. “Burnscar here?”

Taylor nodded matter-of-factly. “The same cloud of vapor that knocked you and Faultline out took down Burnscar too. We’ve used Newter to keep her unconscious while we decide what to do with her.

That seemed incredibly stupid to Charlotte and she gaped. “Why decide?” she whispered fiercely. “Why keep her? Kill order.” Sure, there were pacifists out there, but from what she’d seen so far neither the Undersiders nor Faultline’s mercenary crew shied away from violence. Charlotte’s mom told her that when she was growing up people used Hitler as the quintessentially killable person in morality debates. Obviously that wasn’t a safe direction to take a discussion in Brockton Bay, but even on the internet and in other places around the country, the Slaughterhouse Nine had largely usurped the Nazi’s position as evil personified. Anyone who killed one of them was legally justified, and Protectorate capes or law enforcement had an obligation to try, especially in the case of a teleporter like Burnscar who couldn’t be contained.

“She’s hard to kill,” rasped Taylor. “She took a number of bullets to center mass but they didn’t penetrate her organs and she stopped bleeding quickly. You saw when I stabbed her in the eye and it didn’t do much beyond half blinding her. We think all of that was thanks to Bonesaw’s work. Faultline tried to use your boost to bypass her Manton limit, but apparently your power isn’t active when you’re unconscious. She wanted to try again when you woke up, but there are at least two other options to consider. We’re still discussing it.”

Charlotte decided she felt human enough to sit up, so she carefully pushed her legs over the side of the bed. Her head swam a bit as she shifted and she spent a minute staring at her lap until things stopped spinning. Looking up, her gaze passed over a dresser, a chair, and a disorganized craft table. Watercolor paints, stencils, scissors, and an open pack of colored pencils.

“Bathroom?” she asked, completing step one: make an excuse to get out of sight of the villains (and also actually use the bathroom—yay multitasking!).

Taylor led her out the door, giving her a chance to discreetly snag a green colored pencil. That’s two steps accomplished in less than ten seconds. Keep the optimism going here!

They passed through the living room on their way, where an unmasked Labyrinth was changing a bandage on an older girl’s back. It could only be Spitfire, but her costume and mask had been replaced by grey flannel pajama pants and an XL tee shirt.

“Hey,” she said softly, waving. “Thanks for saving our bacon. I’m Emily.”

“Charlotte,” she responded, almost forgetting to whisper. “Didn’t do anything.”

“Maybe,” said Emily, “but you’re the one that took her down before she could kill anyone or kidnap Elle, so thank you. This is Elle, by the way.”

Labyrinth’s eyes darted to Charlotte, but didn’t make any other acknowledgement, continuing to smear ointment on Emily’s wounds.

Charlotte nodded an uncertain greeting, then fled through the door that that Taylor indicated led to the bathroom. Once inside, she spent a frustrating few minutes write a note to the heroes on squares of toilet paper or tissues with the colored pencil. It barely left a visible line unless she pressed hard enough that the flimsy paper tore, and square after square went into the toilet to be flushed when she actually got around to using the bathroom for its intended purpose. Eventually, Charlotte looked under the sink and found a box of pads. Opening one, was pleased to discover that the pencil was able to write more or less clearly on the wrapper.

Quickly jotting out two copies of the message she’d composed, Charlotte paused when she realized she’d need to sign it as something, and even if two teams of villains knew her name and face by this point, she wasn’t going to give up on a secret identity entirely. She debated with herself for a little bit over the ones she’d thought up the day before. It was extremely tempting to go with Power Play for the hockey reference, especially since it would make a costume easy, but without that sports context it sounded needlessly aggressive. There were corporate and social uses for the phrase that had pretty negative connotations. It didn’t matter much, since this was just a temporary name and she could always change it later. Right now it was important to give the right impression to people who hadn’t seen or spoken to her. Charlotte picked something more innocuous.

> HELP. I am a new cape and want to join the Protectorate, but I am trapped with Undersiders and Faultline’s crew. Please help me!
> 
> -Bouquet

She folded up both copies and put one in each pocket so that she could retrieve one with either hand whenever she encountered a hero or the PRT. That was steps three through five complete! Only the hardest one left, actually delivering it.

Disposing of the rest of the evidence of her message, Charlotte twisted her hair up and stuck the pencil through to hold it together. Now she would have something to write with if she needed it for any future plans.

When she exited the bathroom, Taylor was gone but Emily and Elle had been joined by Faultline, who extended a hand to shake.

“I’m Melanie. Thank you for helping save my people.”

Charlotte’s hand rose automatically, but she quickly stopped herself from actually touching the other cape. She had no desire for grapefruit lightning to tear apart her body or the floor under her feet. Wincing at the way the gauze on her arm pulled at her skin, she clasped her hands together behind her back and nodded a greeting instead. “Charlotte.”

Melanie gave a sad smile. “Good instincts for a Striker to learn. I apologize for how uncomfortable this must be. You have my word that no matter what happens we will not use anything we learn about your identity against you. With that said, you explained before that you were not associated with the Undersiders. You would be welcome to join my crew if you would like a place with us. Take some time to think about it after this crisis is past.”

“I… I’ll think about it,” she whispered.

“In the meantime,” continued Melanie, “I hope you will work with us both personally and as a cape. With the Nine in the city, a power like yours could make all the difference. Specifically, we need to do something about Burnscar.”

“What does that have to do with me?” asked Charlotte, though she thought she already knew.

“We have three options, and your help would make all of them easier. She’s been modified with enough physical protections that actually killing her is difficult. Since she’s unconscious we’re also able to hand her over to the Protectorate, but transporting her leaves us vulnerable to attack by the rest of the Nine, and if she does wake up she can just teleport away.”

“The third option isn’t letting her go, right? Please tell me we aren’t releasing a serial killer to come after us again.”

“No. Nothing like that.” Melanie grimaced. “Another Undersider joined us here after he was attacked by a different member of the Nine last night. Regent claims to be able to Master Burnscar and wants to turn her against the others. That might be better for the city than simply killing her or locking her up, but it could also go badly. We’ve been arguing about it since he arrived.”

“You think it would work better if I helped Regent?” Charlotte guessed.

“More that I don’t think it will work unless you do. Come with me to talk to him and we’ll try to agree on something.”

Melanie led Charlotte across the hall to another apartment. Newter was splayed unconscious on the floor, his hand resting on Burnscar’s neck where she lay beside him. Taylor and a boy who could only be Regent were watching them from the couch. The boy had disheveled curly black hair and a bloody lip, but what stood out were the red welts around his neck. He looked like he’d taken a serious beating.

“This is Alec,” said Taylor. “He can master people, but not quickly or easily. Are you willing to help boost his power to try to keep Burnscar under control? Even if we choose to just turn her in for the heroes to deal with, that would be a lot safer and easier if she couldn’t teleport away. And even if it doesn’t work, it’d be best to test your effect on Regent’s power while a target like Burnscar is available. I wouldn’t want to find out what it can or can’t do on an innocent or on an enemy who is fighting back.”

Taylor was asking in that way salespeople did where they just assumed that the answer was yes and kept going. Charlotte really wanted to say no just out of principle, just to assert some control over her own choices, but what Taylor said made a lot of sense. If they could get the Nine to kill each other off, that would be better for everyone. And she didn’t really have any intention of using her power for Regent after this, but she wasn’t going to rule anything out if the Siberian or Bonesaw were liable to show up.

“You won’t try to Master me, right?”

Alec scoffed. “No. Not my type, and I’m not really one for holding hands. I just want Burnscar to kill my sister, then I’m good.”

Charlotte’s heart stuttered. “What?”

“His sister hates him and apparently visited last night to say she joined the Nine and was designating Alec as a target for them.”

Taylor’s explanation was even worse than the wild imaginings that Charlotte had thought of when Alec had said he wanted to murder his sister. What the hell had she gotten herself into? That plan of contacting the heroes suddenly shot to the very top of her priority list. But for right now, was it better to go along with what the villains were asking for or to try to keep from getting involved? Which would bring less attention to her?

There was no way to know, so she defaulted to the Don’t Piss Off The Biblical Plague step that had worked for her so far. Charlotte moved to the couch and set her hand on Alec’s shoulder.

The sweet scent of watermelon dripped faintly from the bodies of everyone in the room, though less intensely from Newter and Burnscar than from those who were awake. At least, less intense until Alec tensed his muscles and a spurt of watermelon juice splashed over Burnscar’s right arm and spilled up her shoulder. A moment later an echoing splash spread across her left arm. Both splashes of scent faded quickly but left a sticky residue behind like when you get too big of a slice at the summer picnic and juice drips down over your hands, leaving them tacky and uncomfortable.

“Yeah, this is working,” said Alec. “I usually can’t hijack someone while they’re asleep, but I can already tell this will go faster than normal.”

Over the next few minutes he sent repeated washes of watermelon scent across different parts of Burnscar’s body, slowly building up a sticky network. Then a spurt of juice diverted itself up Charlotte’s arm and she jerked away, but her hand had clenched on Alec’s shoulder and wouldn’t let go, so she shoved that watermelon scent as far away from her as she could.

“Hey, don’t stop now,” said Alec. “I swear I’m making progress. It just takes a while.”

Charlotte pulled her unclenching hand away and glared at him.

“You used your power on me. You said you wouldn’t try to do that.”

“Oh. My bad. It’s just flowing so much easier than usual, so I guess I’ve twitched some nerves in other people. Don’t worry, I can’t master you without using my power for a lot longer than that.”

Charlotte remained very suspicious, but what he said matched what she was smelling with Burnscar, so she nervously replaced her hand on his shoulder.

“Well?” asked Alec. “Gonna start up again?”

Surprised, Charlotte realized that she wasn’t smelling anything except a tiny hint of watermelon from Alec himself. Even the olive and nutmeg from Taylor and Burnscar were muted almost to nothing. She slowly unclenched something that wasn’t a muscle, something she hadn’t known existed until now, and let the smells trickle in again. Gradually each scent reached its previous strength, including the turbulent watermelon that Alec began sending through Burnscar’s body again.

During the next fifteen minutes that it took for Burnscar to become saturated with Alec’s sugary watermelon scent, Charlotte practiced tensing and relaxing that grip on her power. She didn’t cut it off completely like she had before, but she found that she could limit her sense of the powers around her, which apparently also reduced her effect on them. It was exhausting to try to throttle things back, and Charlotte released it back to full-open.

Meanwhile, Faultline and Shamrock had both gathered in the room to watch. When Charlotte removed her hand from Alec’s shoulder, she could still detect hints of it surrounding Burnscar’s natural nutmeg.

“Well?” asked Faultline.

“It worked,” answered Alec. “I can’t really make her do anything until she wakes up, but you can stop drugging her now. I have full control.”

Faultline nodded and carefully rolled Newter away from Burnscar’s unconscious body and towards the side of the room without touching his skin.

“Wait,” asked Charlotte, realizing. “Why is Newter knocked out?”

“You removed Faultline’s Manton limit,” said Shamrock. “Best guess is you did the same for him, and he got a massive dose of his own drug from basically his entire body. Hopefully he’ll wake up soon.”

Charlotte shuddered. Accidental dismemberment, capes getting disabled by their own powers. How many more effects of her boost were dangerous or deadly? All the more reason to get the Protectorate’s backing as soon as possible. Their procedures and Thinkers could help steer her away from causing too much harm.

Taylor cleared her throat to get everyone’s attention.

“I just got a message. The heroes have called a meeting of all the city’s capes to talk about the Nine. It’s this afternoon.”

“Good,” said Shamrock. “We can get some rest before then.”

“We need to decide who’s going,” said Faultline. “Some of our members are too visibly injured to attend a meet with the other teams, and I’d prefer to leave at least Newter and Gregor somewhere safe.”

“I’ll attend with Grue,” asserted Taylor. “Alec can stay here with your people, and Tattletale will want to come if she wakes up. I can’t imagine her agreeing to stay away from that.”

“I want to go too,” said Charlotte.

“Are you sure?” asked Taylor. “The Merchants and the Empire will be there. It will make it harder for you to keep a low profile.”

Yes, but the heroes would also be there. It was her best chance to get their attention and maybe pass along her note.

“I’m sure.”

Taylor nodded and turned away. Charlotte hid a sigh of relief as the conversation moved on. They were debating what to do with Burnscar now that she’d been mastered.

Charlotte closed her eyes and breathed, then walked back across the hall to the room with Emily and Elle. They would be better company than Taylor and Melanie’s forceful personalities, or Burnscar’s unconscious form. Passing through the door, she tucked her hands in her pockets. The left one crinkled slightly, but the right one was empty. One of her notes was gone.


	15. Tip 2.5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A portion of the dialogue in this chapter is adapted from Plague 12.2, and should be attributed to Wildbow.

Somehow, Charlotte had entirely forgotten that she needed a costume to attend the big cape meeting. There was just under an hour before they had to leave, and she was making her way down the hallway of abandoned apartments trying to find something appropriate to wear. She wasn’t panicked enough yet to call it ransacking, but she was definitely rifling through the occupants’ belongings, not just perusing. So far she’d found precisely squat, unless you counted the nice pair of flats that fit her and looked entirely impractical for cape activities in a half flooded city. She was keeping them anyway. If this place was still empty after three weeks, she figured there wasn’t much point of waiting for the actual owners to return.

The odds of finding anything that looked decent and fit her were pretty low, but she didn’t want to just improvise a random piece of cloth into a mask. Then again, doing something stupid like a trench coat or a bathrobe would be worse than just civvies and a mask. Judging by the wardrobe, whoever lived in this unit had been unbelievably petite, so Charlotte started to move on to the next one. She paused when she saw the collection of perfume bottles on the vanity, next to a happily smiling Korean family. She took two half empty spray bottles to the kitchen and opened them up. Not bothering to empty out the old contents, she shuffled through a cabinet and grabbed the spiciest things she could find, then added sri racha sauce to one and chili oil to the other. She had no idea if that would actually do anything, but perfume had chemicals that extracted scents and things from their sources, so there was a chance it could pull the irritants out of the spicy foods or at least mix with the chemicals from the chili to generate a poor man’s pepper spray. It would probably be ineffective, but it was worth a try until she could get the real thing. Just carrying it would be on-brand for her new cape name, so it was worth it even if there was no defensive quality to the mixture. She screwed the tops back on and tested the spritz nozzles to make sure they weren’t plugged, then stuffed them in her back pockets.

At the end of the hall Charlotte found a mostly empty wardrobe with a few things in her size. There wasn’t much selection, but a black long-sleeved blouse with lace at the collar looked like it could work well. A yellow sundress that was just a little too big for her almost made the cut, but despite how awesome Faultline’s combat dress looked, Charlotte really didn’t think she had the athleticism to compensate if a swishing skirt caught on something. From her vast caping experience of the past day and a half, Charlotte thought it was safe to say that running was something that happened a lot. Better not to handicap herself any more than necessary. She’d stick with jeans, thank you very much.

Her best finds were in the kitchen area of a small studio on the next floor up. A cute, pale green barista’s apron lent just the right “professional uniform” image, and could equally allude to an old time perfume counter girl or a modern florist. Either association with Bouquet would work for her theme. Putting on the apron, Charlotte also spied a familiar handle poking out of the knife block. Pulling it free, she saw that yes, this was the same double-pronged cheese knife / fork thing that she had used at the mall. Despite the way that memories of the blade sliding out of Whizzer’s stomach still made her want to vomit whenever she thought of him, holding that knife was unexpectedly comforting. Not wanting to analyze that feeling too closely, Charlotte slipped the weapon into her new apron’s pocket and turned to the door.

She froze. Taylor was there, just standing silently. Watching. The girl didn’t even seem to realize that there was a centipede spiraling up her pant leg.

Charlotte tried to ignore the bug and look at Taylor’s face, and did pretty well at until it disappeared behind Taylor’s back and failed to reappear. The absence of the bug was far more distracting than its obvious presence, and Charlotte shuddered as she felt imaginary tingles across her skin.

“Here,” said Taylor, raising a hand. It held a floral scarf that had a deep purple background and a light periwinkle border. A tracery of leaves in the same shade of green as her apron tied it into the rest of the costume admirably.

Charlotte took it, trying not to show how she was examining it for spiders or wasps. There weren’t any that she could see, which was not nearly as reassuring as she would have liked. She tried it on. The scarf was long enough to wrap around her face and still drape prettily over her shoulders.

“Thank you,” said Charlotte, wincing again at the soreness of her throat. “It’s lovely.”

Taylor didn’t move, barely even blinked. Charlotte slowly realized what she had missed before. The scarf was perfect because it matched the new cape name she’d chosen. The one that she hadn’t told anyone yet.

Looking down, she saw that Taylor’s hand was still extended, holding half a crumpled pad wrapper. The note that had gone missing from her pocket. Charlotte shrank in on herself.

“What now?” she asked.

“I thought you’d agreed to wait until Coil was dealt with,” said Skitter. No mask on, but that intensity was definitely Skitter, not the Taylor that Charlotte remembered shuffling through the halls at Winslow with her head down.

Charlotte took a deep breath. Too late to deflect. She could only do her best to explain. “I’m staying with people who have been personally targeted by the Slaughterhouse Nine. That scares me far more than some local villain.”

“Coil is not just a minor player. He’s gearing up to take over the entire city, and he is being guided by someone who can see the future.”

“Sure. That sounds like bad news, but not when compared to Shatterbird. She _kills_ cities, not just takes them over. The Siberian is stronger than _Alexandria_. I’m sorry if I don’t feel safe with a member of the Nine sitting in a room downstairs after she nearly burned all of us to death. If Coil is really as bad as you say then I’ll happily help you take him down. _After_ I survive the Slaughterhouse Nine.”

“You think the heroes will be better at protecting you?”

 _Yes, absolutely,_ was what Charlotte didn’t say. Instead, she went with the more diplomatic, “No reason not to hedge my bets. Two full villain teams already know my name and face. I’d like the good guys to at least know I exist before I am too deep into this to grab a lifeline.”

Taylor didn’t answer for almost a full minute. Eventually, she tossed the crumpled note back to Charlotte, who missed the catch and scrambled to pick it up from the floor. “Your decision. I’m the last person who should stand in someone’s way if they want to be a hero. Think hard before you deliver that, though. And I’d prefer if you didn’t phrase it in a way that makes them think we kidnapped you. We didn’t.”

She turned around and left, and Charlotte collapsed against the cabinets, trying to catch her breath after that confrontation. Voices drifted back through the open doorway, and Charlotte was pretty sure they were intentionally letting her hear.

“This is a mistake,” said Lisa. “A big mistake.”

“It’s her choice. You know why I can’t be hypocritical about this.”

“We shouldn’t even let her go to the meeting. Coil will certainly be there.”

“I’m counting on that,” Taylor answered. “His mercs were watching the Palanquin last night, so it’s a safe bet he knows about her and probably about her power. Our window is very short.”

“If you try anything at the meeting, everyone will come down on you. The Nine are S-Class, so this will be treated just like the Endbringer Truce, with the same consequences. They already think you violated the last one.”

“I know. Get Bitch here. I’ll need her and Regent to make this plan work.”

“And Grue? Our Fearless Leader won’t want you planning something behind his back.”

“Can’t tell him over the phone, and his territory is too far to make it here in time without using Coil’s drivers. I’ll tell him right before the meeting.”

Their voices cut off as the stairwell door shut behind them, and Charlotte wondered just what she had precipitated here. More importantly, did it change what she needed to do?

\---0---

In an absurd desire for theatrics, someone had chosen to hold the cape meeting in the middle of Crater Lake in downtown. The Protectorate capes and Hookwolf’s Chosen were already present, congregating on the roof of a submerged skyscraper that couldn’t possibly still be structurally sound. It was even tilted at enough of an angle for one corner to dip fully beneath the surface. Charlotte imagined the building shifting beneath her feet as she stepped out of the launch onto the fire escape that had all of five steps exposed above the water level. At least, she hoped it was her imagination.

She focused on the bright sunshine, on the fact that she was outside, not underground, and that this water was sitting placidly instead of rushing down onto her face, forcing its way into her mouth, trying to drown—

“You okay?” asked Shamrock. Pulled back to reality, Charlotte smiled at her, though behind that scarf she doubted anyone could tell.

“I will be. Thank you.”

They had all traveled together, and their joint arrival was a matter of apparent interest to the other capes. Faultline and Shamrock were representing their team, while Skitter, Grue, and Tattletale were there on behalf of the Undersiders. Plus Charlotte, who had told them to call her Bouquet in her new costume. It wasn’t great, but it was worlds better than a skintight pink hoodie.

As she walked closer, Charlotte realized that she had been wrong. It wasn’t just the Chosen capes from the former Empire. Crusader, Night, and Fog were there too from the Pure, but Purity was missing. They weren’t standing with Hookwolf’s group, exactly, but they also weren’t positioned in obvious challenge to them either.

Charlotte wasn’t at all sure whether this was a good thing or not. First, was Purity actually gone, or had she just stayed away from the meeting? Neither the Undersiders nor Faultline had brought their full rosters, nor had the Protectorate. Only Miss Militia, Battery, and a teen who looked to be made of metal had come. In contrast, Hookwolf had ensured all of his capes were present. Probably to make a statement of strength.

If Purity truly was out of the picture for whatever reason, then the three capes who had followed her would either fold back in with the others or leave the city. Either way, the biggest check on Hookwolf’s expansion and power in the city would be gone. Under his leadership the former Empire capes were far more violent in outlook and in action than they had been under Kaiser, but the white supremacy and Nazi rhetoric took a back seat, so it was entirely possible that the mundane members of the gang would be less involved or encouraged to act against their usual targets. Then again, the capes had never been the primary concern for the minorities living in the Bay. They were just the muscle that made organized opposition to the run-of-the-mill bigots difficult and dangerous. It was hard to guess what would happen.

Then again, the Empire had lost three of its capes to the last S-class threat, so one could always hope that the current one would do its damage in their direction.

The group that called themselves the Travelers, supposedly semi-allies to the Undersiders beneath Coil, arrived next on the back of a sea serpent thing rather than a boat. They passed close enough to Charlotte that she could tell every single one of them smelled awful. Fortunately, they took up a position far enough away that she didn’t have to smell them through the entire meeting.

Coil arrived next, surrounded by six men in tactical gear that looked like the outfits PRT troopers wore minus the logos. Tattletale brushed Charlotte’s hand with her own, then whispered something to Skitter.

A few moments later, the final group approached. There were three capes, each riding their own jet ski. Charlotte felt a twist of fear and disgust when she recognized Whirligig and Whizzer from the other night. At the same time, she was unexpectedly relieved to see that Whizzer was still alive. That wasn’t rational. He probably hated her now, and would come after her personally. Still, it was important to her that she hadn’t killed anyone the other night. Not that she would have been too broken up about it if he had died, but she would have felt awful if she had to tell her mom that she was a killer now. Maybe. Given the circumstances, she doubted her mother would have actually been upset about that, and Charlotte wasn’t entirely sure what she would have felt. Regardless, it was a relief not to have to deal with that.

The third cape with the Merchants wasn’t someone Charlotte had seen before, and he was basically wearing regular clothing with a white strip of cloth wrapped around his eyes for a mask, little eyeholes cut into it. Whirligig and Whizzer kept their distance from him, which seemed odd until a crackling ball of brilliant white appeared in the air near him before vanishing.

“Hey, no powers!” said Hookwolf, bristling and starting to grow larger.

“Eraser’s a new trigger,” said Whirligig assertively. “He’s still getting his power under control. Don’t get too close and he won’t do anything to you unless you’re asking for it.”

“So, you’re the new leader of the Merchants?”

“For the moment,” she agreed. “We’ll see what happens when the rest of our crew sober up and break out.”

“I believe everyone has arrived,” said Coil, redirecting the conversation. “Shall we begin?”

“Indeed,” said Miss Militia. “It seems we have a problem.”

“We do,” Hookwolf answered, inserting himself. “Two problems, actually.”

“Two?” Militia asked.

Hookwolf pointed at the Travelers, then at the Undersiders and Faultline. “They’re being cocky, think they’re being clever. Skitter made a move on the Boardwalk, Bitch has claimed the trainyard. Grue, Ballistic, and Trickster have all been active in different parts of downtown, attacking my people. The rest of their teams have done the same. All acting ‘alone,’ each making moves to take a piece of the city for themselves.”

“We already knew they were taking territory,” Miss Militia responded. “This isn’t a priority. The Nine—”

“They haven’t taken territory,” Hookwolf snapped back, “They’re taking the city. Split it up all nice and proper between them, and now they’re taking advantage of the distraction the Nine are giving them to secure their positions before we catch on.”

The leader of the Travelers spoke up, then. “We didn’t know the Nine were around before we put this into motion.”

“Pigshit,” said Whizzer. “You openly attacked our party two nights ago.”

Faultline raised a hand. “Do not flatter yourself that any outside chaos played a role in your defeat there. Your so-called party was chaotic enough all on its own.”

Whizzer went to speak again, but Faultline bulled right over him.

“Furthermore, I categorically deny that our actions that night had anything to do with the Slaughterhouse Nine. As we have relayed to the Protectorate, my team and members of the Undersiders performed that joint assault because civilians and capes under our protection had been abducted by the Merchants. We retrieved them.”

“You took a lot more than that,” shouted Whirligig. “A particular briefcase spring to mind?”

“A contract we undertook for a client, that coincided with our other goals.”

Hookwolf could see that things weren’t going his way. “If you aren’t taking advantage of the Nine’s presence, then you should agree to a truce while they are in town. In order to ensure you don’t exploit the situation for your own advantage to steal territories of other groups, you could be housed in a hotel provided by the PRT.”

 _“What are you even suggesting, here, Hookwolf?”_ Charlotte was gratified to see that Skitter’s swarm voice was just as creepy to the Empire capes as it was to her, judging by their body language. _“Your Chosen are the largest cape force in the city, you are expanding your own borders, and yet when others coordinate to oppose you in twos or threes, or even in larger groups of still-inferior numbers, you call foul and ask the heroes to adjudicate? I thought you believed in personal strength. If you are not strong enough to defend what you claim, then don’t go crying to others to make us play by your rules.”_

“Shut it, Bug Bitch,” he snarled.

 _“Honey-tongued Kaiser, you are not,”_ Skitter observed.

Miss Militia had had enough. “Gang territories are not important enough to derail this meeting. If you don’t agree to prioritize the immediate threat, then we have no reason to be here.”

“I agree,” said Coil smoothly. “In fact, the situation is more dire than you may realize. I have sources that inform me that should Jack Slash survive his visit to Brockton Bay, it bodes ill for everyone.”

“That’s vague,” Faultline spoke.

“I’ll be more specific. Should Jack Slash not die before he leaves Brockton Bay, it is very likely the world will end in a matter of years.”

“You contacted us to say something very similar a couple of days ago.” Miss Militia said, “But I have the same questions now that I did then. Do you have sources? Can you verify this? Or provide more information?”

Behind her, the metal boy pulled out a phone.

“More information? Yes. I have sought further details and pieced together a general picture of things. Jack Slash is the catalyst for this event, not the cause. At some point in the coming years, Jack Slash kills, talks to, meets or influences someone. This causes a chain of events to occur, leading to the deaths of at least one third of the world’s population. If Jack Slash is killed, the event is likely to occur at some point in the more distant future instead.”

“Dinah Alcott,” said the metal boy.

“Beg pardon?” Coil asked.

“Thursday, April fourteenth of this year, Dinah Alcott was kidnapped from her home and has not been seen since. Dinah had missed several weeks of classes with crippling headaches in the months before her disappearance, and she confided to her friends that she thought she could see the future, but doing so hurt her.”

“You think Dinah is Coil’s source. That makes a lot of sense.” Miss Militia turned from Weld to Coil, and her voice was heavy with accusation, “ _Coil_?”

“I did not kidnap her. I offered Dinah training and relief from the drawbacks of her abilities on the contingency that she immediately cut off all contact with her family and friends and provide me a year of service. She took a week to decide, then contacted me during one of her attacks.”

Skitter moved to say something, but Tattletale stopped her, eyes locked on Coil.

Instead, Miss Militia’s pursed her lips. “Could I contact her to verify this?”

“No. For one thing, I have no reason to let you. Also, the process of gaining control of her power requires that she be kept strictly isolated from outside elements. A simple phone call would set her back weeks.”

“So Coil has a precog,” Hookwolf growled, “That explains a great deal about his successes against the Empire.”

Coil clasped his hands in front of him, “I knew you might come to these conclusions if I volunteered this information. Would I weaken my position if I did not wholeheartedly believe that what I was saying was correct? Jack Slash must die, or we all die.”

Skitter looked at Tattletale again, who shook her head. “Subtlety only,” she whispered.

 _“Then how do we make that happen?”_ asked Skitter to the assembled capes. _“We won’t be the first to try. He’s had a kill order active for decades.”_

“First,” said Miss Militia, “we share information. Battery and Weld will give each group dossiers on what the PRT knows of the current membership of the group. Then each group will share what they know of the Nine’s movements and motives in Brockton Bay. We know that they are here on to recruit, and we expect some of you have already been contacted by them.”

As Battery approached their group, Skitter waved her closer.

“I have some information to share with the Protectorate,” she said in a low voice.

“About the Nine? You should share it with everyone.”

“No. About Dinah Alcott. I can confirm that Coil is holding her against her will.”

Battery handed a packet of papers to Grue, and another to Faultline. “If that’s true we are definitely interested in knowing more, but why should we believe you after you used us to take out most of the Merchant capes as part of your bid to take over the city? I’m more inclined to think that a manipulative Thinker on your team is pitting us against someone you can’t take on yourself.”

“That’s not what happened.”

“No, you’re right. Squealer’s death shows you are willing to take out your opponents on your own.”

“She died?” asked Charlotte. Maybe she was a killer now after all, depending on how much responsibility lay on her shoulders.

“Yes. Bleeding out through a stump of a leg tends to cause that.”

“We’re sorry to hear she succumbed to her injuries,” said Faultline. “But we did not intend her death. I have no personal knowledge of Miss Alcott’s situation, but I have been briefed by the Undersiders and believe their intelligence to be accurate.”

“I’m happy to verify all the details that I can,” added Skitter.

Battery ground her teeth. “I’ll talk to Miss Militia.”

Before the hero left, Charlotte gathered her courage and stepped forward, pulling the note from her pocket. Time for step six. “I’d like a copy as well.”

“Who are you?”

“Bouquet.” She held out her hand, hoping the note was visible.

Tattletale interrupted. “Skinny here is an independent hero, but she’s been slumming with us for a couple days.” That was not what Charlotte had expected at all, especially after what she’d heard Lisa say at the apartment complex.

“A hero, really? What are you doing with them?”

“She helped us fight off Burnscar last night, and we generously offered to help treat her injuries.” Tattletale gestured at the bulge of gauze underneath Charlotte’s sleeve. “She may or may not wish to show her gratitude for that and other things in the future, but she’s made clear that she doesn’t want to belong to our group.”

“Is this true?” Battery asked.

“Yes,” Charlotte acknowledged softly. She lowered her hand, torn between gratitude that this had gone much more easily than she expected, or cheated that her efforts on her own behalf had been rendered irrelevant. Then again, she doubted that Tattletale would have said anything in her support if Charlotte hadn’t written the note and prepared to hand it over. Or if Skitter hadn’t given her explicit support and overruled Tattletale’s objections.

“Something else to talk about later, then,” said Battery.

Their talk had taken long enough that the other groups were looking at them, and Weld had already distributed packets to the other leaders. Both he and Battery returned to Miss Militia’s side.

“Now then,” said Miss Militia. “The Protectorate has seen evidence of killings performed by several members of the Slaughterhouse Nine, but have only engaged Mannequin so far. Which of them have you encountered?”


	16. Tip 2.6

In the end, the terms of the so-called truce seemed exceptionally nebulous. Charlotte had imagined a contract and specific concessions, or at least a verbal promise to avoid hostilities. Instead, each group had postured and promised that they were going to keep doing their thing to control (or, as they called it, “rebuild”) the city while still somehow “cooperating” with everyone else. Each team leader was given a radio to communicate with the PRT’s central dispatch to help expedite information flow, but aside from being on high alert and agreeing that the infamous serial murderers were mutual enemies of everyone present, nothing much seemed to be decided.

It didn’t help that they only knew about half of the Nine’s chosen candidates. It was all too easy to imagine Hookwolf joining up with Jack Slash’s merry band. Shatterbird had picked him, probably out of camaraderie over the ability to blenderize people with sharp things. Faultline and Grue explained about their team members’ encounters with Burnscar (leaving out the fact she’d been captured) and Cherish (explaining her powers since she hadn’t been in the dossier from the PRT; nobody was quite sure who she’d replaced). Coil claimed that Crawler had targeted a nonpowered person in his base, which reeked of lies and misdirection. Then again, he had a small army of violent mercenaries working for him, so it wasn’t impossible that one of them was sadistically insane enough to be of interest to the Nine. On the other hand, not all of the candidates were chosen for their potential to join. Others seemed to be people that the Nine just wanted to torture and terrorize personally, above and beyond their usual murderousness. For example, Mannequin had targeted Armsmaster, the local Protectorate head. (Or former head, perhaps? There were rumors that he’d been injured fighting Leviathan, which would explain why he hadn’t been active since then. Miss Militia had taken over in his absence.)

That left at least Jack Slash, the Siberian, and Bonesaw unaccounted for, who were arguably the scariest of the lot. It also left one open slot that might be occupied by either of the known recent members Hatchet Face and Murder Rat, or by another surprise unknown like Cherish. Or, as Tattletale suggested, it could be vacant to account for why they were recruiting, but Charlotte didn’t trust Brockton Bay’s luck to receive any less of a disaster than Murphy’s absolute best.

As far as Charlotte could tell, the usefulness of knowing which capes had been nominated was marginal. It gave a hint on where the Nine might show up, but any planned coordination for an ambush would be destabilized by the stress of wondering if a candidate, Hookwolf for example, might suddenly decide he liked the idea of giving up his remaining inhibitions and joining the Slaughterhouse. As best she could figure, the nominations were a distraction. There was no way the Nine were going to limit their atrocities to the designated capes, and any time the combined parahumans were watching their own backs was time they weren’t protecting the civilians.

Then again, she couldn’t really blame them for being concerned. Charlotte was already panicking from being near Labyrinth and Regent. If she had been directly targeted herself, she probably wouldn’t have been able to think about anything else at all. As it was, she had enough brainspace left to worry about the departing Nazi capes, especially the way Night just walked down to the submerged portion of the roof and disappeared into the dark water. Her monstrous form could be practically anywhere now, and they would never see her coming from the depths to sink their little boat. It was like those movie posters where the oblivious swimmer is utterly dwarfed by the jaws or tentacles or whatever are ominously reaching up from the bottom of the image, except that the monster in question was actually a psychopathic agent of Gesellschaft rather than an improbably toothy fish.

Still, Charlotte forced herself aboard their little launch. Battery had given them an address where they could go to meet Miss Militia or another representative she sent.

“If everything goes well, Bouquet will be on her way to the PRT building with a hero escort in less than an hour,” said Tattletale. Charlotte wanted to throttle her for taunting Murphy like that. Hadn’t she lived in this city long enough to know better?

“Then we need to get started,” said Skitter. “Your hand, please, Bouquet.”

Charlotte hadn’t been included in most of the planning, but cooperating was clearly the price of her safe passage to the Protectorate, so she barely hesitated before grasping Skitter’s hand and feeling her olive cloud inundate the surrounding area.

“Time?” asked Skitter.

“Two and a half minutes,” answered Tattletale. “Regent is standing by. Coil is still on the rooftop.”

“Are you two both sure about this?” asked Grue. He was clearly irritated about something. “I don’t want a reputation for violating a Truce.”

“Completely deniable,” said Tattletale. “ _We_ won’t be doing anything.”

Grue wasn’t satisfied. “You said we had months to prepare for this. It had better not come back to bite us in the ass.”

“I’m certain that this is our best and possibly only chance. If we don’t do this we will rapidly lose any leverage we have. You’ve seen what he does with people when he holds all the power.”

“… Fine. I’m not happy but you have my go-ahead.”

“Thank you,” said Skitter. The way she said it made Charlotte pretty certain that she hadn’t been waiting for permission.

Their boat continued in silence except for Tattletale calling out the countdown every thirty seconds. When time expired she pressed something on her phone.

If she hadn’t been following Tattletale’s line of sight, Charlotte would have missed the burst of flame that appeared deep into the city.

“Nothing,” said Skitter. “Site two.”

A text message later, flames leapt up on the opposite shore of the lake.

“No reaction,” said Skitter. “The vehicle.”

A short distance away from the last burst of fire, something exploded.

“That was it,” announced Skitter. “He’s running.”

Glancing back at the submerged building they had left, Charlotte could see a lot of movement, but they were far enough away to not really make out the details. A moment later, Grue and Faultline’s radios both crackled.

_< This is central dispatch. Coil reports a sighting of Burnscar by his organization at the corner of Harper and Wade.>_

“His organization. Right,” said Tattletale.

_< Protectorate capes Assault and Triumph responding with squad ten. ETA two minutes.>_

_< Hookwolf here. Rune and Victor are en route. The rest of us will wait in reserve in case of any other attacks.>_

“You’ve been tracking Coil’s movements?” asked Tattletale.

“Yes,” said Skitter. Her swarm was layered over her voice, but only enough to add an unnatural buzzing echo to it rather than the chittering speech she often used. “His actions mean we are using target list D.”

When Tattletale texted that information to her teammates, nothing seemed to happen. The launch reached shore and everyone disembarked.

“You don’t think they’ll be suspicious that the attack happened right after the meeting finished?” asked Shamrock.

“Probably not,” said Tattletale. “Or, if they are, they’ll suspect Jack of trying to test the strength of the alliance. It’s a good bet they knew this meeting was happening, especially if Cherish has the city-wide tracking range that Regent says she does.”

Coil’s voice came over the radio. _< I am told that Burnscar is now outside the Prudential building, on the side by the Old Town Hall. I’m sending my men there now.>_

Tattletale fistpumped. “We got him! We got the arrogant bastard! That site was on the wrong list.” She put her phone to her ear. “Switch to target list A now, and meet us at the second rendezvous. He’ll be on his way shortly.” Turning to Grue, she said. “Go with Faultline and Shamrock to the fallback site, you’re distracting the Travelers. _With conversation only._ This is us discussing how to work together, _not_ us breaking the Truce. Skitter will signal you if there’s a problem.”

“Maybe it’s for the best we all have our own territories now,” Grue grumbled. “I don’t even know why you call me the leader.”

“You’re still in charge. We’re just handling tactics and acting on information you didn’t have access to yet.”

“Right. Whatever you say. We’ll definitely be talking about this later.” He climbed in the back seat of Shamrock’s vehicle and they went.

Moments later a pickup truck pulled up, driven by the minions Charlotte recognized as Minor and Senegal from the mall. She climbed into the back with Skitter and Tattletale, doing her best to keep contact with Skitter the whole time to maintain the power enhancement.

They drove about half a mile and parked in the middle level of a small parking deck. Regent was waiting there, along with a well-muscled girl wearing a dog mask. She was holding a puppy and surrounded by dogs of different sizes. At least, Charlotte assumed that the two draft-horse sized animals bristling with bone and exposed muscle were also dogs like the six normal-looking ones. Taylor had said Bitch enhanced dogs, but “enhance” hadn’t prepared Charlotte for the hulked-out zombie alien look she was seeing. Her eyes were drawn to the four-inch mismatched fangs sprouting from a mouth reminiscent of a bulldog’s, and she shuddered. At least it wasn’t slobbering like her cousin Samuel’s dog did. That would have been too gross for words. Both of the enhanced dogs trailed a faint hazelnut odor that echoed the much stronger scent coming from the girl.

 _“He’s on his way now,”_ said Skitter. _“From the way he’s acting, he has collapsed at least four timelines since boarding his boat, which makes me think your plan is working.”_

“The fact that he’s headed this direction means we’ve spoofed his power successfully,” said Tattletale. “It’s going from check to checkmate that’s going to be tough. As soon as he sees any of us, he’ll start deploying more appropriate countermeasures.”

_“Regent, I’m going to signal a location at twenty second intervals. Have Burnscar hit those to herd him towards us.”_

“Sure, boss. I didn’t think you’d sanction me entertaining myself like this so soon, after how reluctant you were to try it with Shadow Stalker.”

What had happened with Shadow Stalker? Charlotte made a mental note to ask the heroes later.

 _“Bitch, if he starts to head the wrong way you get to chase him down with Brutus and Lucy.”_ Skitter continued to give directions, and Charlotte watched Tattletale’s smile grow and grow. It was the same expression her zaydee got watching a hockey match when his team was up a player and hadn’t lost possession of the puck all period.

Wait. That wasn’t the only thing reminding her of her grandfather. Zaydee’s cologne, the one he bought for himself every birthday, was soothing her nose, making her think of celebrating Yom Kippur and Purim and other holy days at his apartment. She looked around. That cologne was settled on all five of them. All five capes, but not Minor or Senegal.

“We might have a problem,” Charlotte said. Where was it coming from?

_“Yeah. Coil just stopped his car around that corner. I think he’s made us.”_

“Not that,” said Charlotte. “There’s another cape nearby, and they know we’re here.” She traced the scent to the ramp behind her, realizing as she did so that there were several additional faint odors mingled with it, barely detectable. “More than one.” There was a mouthwatering persimmon, a clear white wine, and the cloying stench of her uncle’s chicken coop. And, if she concentrated, there was just a hint of clam chowder behind all of those.

Tattletale cursed. “I thought Faultline could keep the Travelers busy. Bitch, Skitter, you stay on Coil. I’ll talk to Trickster.”

“I don’t think it’s the Travelers,” Charlotte contradicted nervously. “All of them smelled gross to me, and only one of these capes does.”

“Oh, no.” Tattletale’s eyes widened. “It’s—”

“And that’s the dawning horror I was waiting for,” sang a musical voice. A young twenty-something woman with red in her hair strode into view, followed by three unmistakable figures. A naked woman with zebra-striped skin, a creepy blonde girl, and a roguish man with a goatee.

Charlotte frantically started brainstorming ways to accomplish step: “don’t die” that had popped up as a depressingly recurrent element in her plans.


	17. Tip 2.7

Charlotte flinched at the gunfire as Minor and Senegal immediately brought their weapons to bear. Dozens of bullets plinked ineffectually off of Jack Slash and Bonesaw. Jack glanced at the two mercenaries, looking bored. They switched to firing purple lasers, which did absolutely nothing. Jack yawned, spinning a knife in his hand.

Charlotte concentrated on the scents her power was feeding her. The Siberian’s foul chickenshit smell was spread across the other Slaughterhouse members. “Stop,” she said. “The Siberian is making them invulnerable.”

Jack smiled at her and winked, and Charlotte felt her grandfather’s cologne waft over her again. “Well spotted, young lady. I do so prefer it when people are intelligent.” Then he flicked his knife and gashes appeared across both of the mercenaries’ hands, forcing them to drop their weapons. “No need not to keep things civilized, right gentlemen?”

Cherish danced forward then, spinning on her toes. “Hello, brother dear,” she said. “Allow me introduce the most infamous killer in the world.”

Jack Slash bowed. “Monsieur Vasil, I’ve heard so much about you.”

Somehow Regent managed to maintain his usual bored tone. “Okay. That’s nice. Who the fuck are you again?”

“No swearing!” chided Bonesaw.

“Yes, indeed,” said Jack. “There is a child present. And while I doubt that my reputation has failed to precede me, I am more than happy to demonstrate the reasons for my fame if you need a reminder.”

Senegal cried out and grabbed at his face, where a bloody gash had appeared diagonally across one side of his face, including an eye that was now utterly ruined.

“Nah, that’s okay,” said Regent. “You meet one megalomaniac you’ve met them all. Growing up under my father left me kinda hard to impress.”

Jack laughed. “Well, you’ve got the family spunk in common with your sister, I can see that. Good choice, Cherish. I’m already thinking of ideas for his test. You have to be more creative with the ones who are already sociopaths.”

Meanwhile, Tattletale had finally unfrozen and was hissing to Skitter out of the side of her mouth. “Plan’s shot. We can’t get Coil to Regent. You have to kill him right now.”

Somehow, Jack caught that whispered conversation.

“Oh? ‘Kill him now?’ Somehow I don’t believe you are talking about me.” He gave a theatric gasp. “Did I just interrupt a murder attempt? That is…not particularly interesting. So many people are murderers these days, especially in a city like this one. On the other hand, it doesn’t quite match the profiles dear Cherish assembled of her brother’s team, so unexpected will have to do. I’ll just stand here and observe, then, shall I? Don’t mind me.”

“I’m … not sure I can just kill someone,” muttered Skitter to Tattletale.

“Hmm. Disappointing,” said Jack, cutting off whatever Tattletale was going to say. “Sounds like someone lacks resolve.”

Charlotte didn’t think there was anything she could do here, and even if she did manage to sense something useful, she didn’t want to attract attention to herself by speaking out again. But she also had the Trump aspect of her power. She was already boosting Skitter, and reaching more distant bugs didn’t matter when Jack Slash was standing right in front of them. Similarly, boosting Regent to master someone in less than 20 minutes didn’t sound very helpful when they could all be dead any second. But they said information could win battles, right? If she augmented Tattletale’s power, maybe the Thinker would find a way out. Sliding her hand down from Skitter’s shoulder, she reached around behind the taller girl’s back and tapped Lisa on the arm, letting the rosemary perfume billow across everything.

“More importantly,” Jack continued, “it sounds like someone is denying my entertainment, so I might just have to make my own.”

“Don’t worry,” said Regent. “I gotcha covered.”

“Oh, God,” whispered Tattletale under her breath. “Imp!”

“Ah ah ah,” Jack cautioned Regent. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that with borrowed talents. We actually came here to liberate something stolen from us. Bonesaw, if you would?”

The blonde girl pulled down a flap of skin on her arm, revealing a bright pink button that she pressed cheekily.

“What? How?” asked Regent, and in a sudden burst of flame Burnscar was there, screaming incoherently.

Regent swung his arm, and Burnscar spasmed, falling to the ground. She teleported across the parking deck, spraying fire and twitching.

“Hmm,” said Jack. “An incomplete counter, it seems. You’ll correct that, won’t you, Bonesaw?”

“Of course, Uncle Jack,” she responded brightly. “Regent should perform his own art, not hide his talents behind false faces.”

Cherish grinned at Regent. “Don’t take other people’s toys. It’s not nice.”

Burnscar flashed into existence right behind Regent and threw a fireball at his head, but her fingers twitched at the last moment, sending it off course to splash harmlessly against the Siberian. The Siberian looked around slowly with an expression that reminded Charlotte of a cat that has decided it’s not hungry or annoyed enough to leave its spot in the sunshine. She _really_ didn’t want to see the woman get upset or interested in something.

“With that taken care of,” said Jack, dusting his hands, “we can move on to the business of checking up on our recruits. Before that, Skitter, let me tell you that someone will be dead before we leave here. Maybe several someones. If you work up the nerve to off whoever it is you were talking about a moment ago, I promise that one more person from your group will survive.”

“Is it my turn yet?” chirped Bonesaw. “I really wanted to say hi and meet the people who might be joining the family.”

“Little busy here,” Regent grunted, sweating. “This bitch just won’t stay away.” Burnscar was still angrily trying to approach him, which made it hard for Charlotte to pay attention to the conversation while still watching to see which direction might hold fiery death at any moment.

“No swearing! I already told you,” said Bonesaw.

“What did you mean by ‘recruits,’ plural?” asked Skitter.

“The dog girl!” said Bonesaw cheerily. “I love dogs. I’ve seen the pictures of them, but they are even more beautiful in person.” She waved at the two horse-sized monstrosities beside Bitch. Charlotte suddenly felt better about her earlier disgust for the things. A glowing review from Bonesaw was something she was happy disagreeing with. 

“Bitch?” asked Skitter.

The girl in the dog mask didn’t say anything, but she was holding some kind of staring contest with the Siberian, so it was pretty clear who had nominated her. Dear God, how had Charlotte ended up with these sorts of people?

Burnscar teleported in next to Regent again, but her arms locked up and she started to fall over. Regent was panting with effort.

“Mimi,” called Jack. “Come away for a moment. I need all of them to be able to focus on what I’m saying.”

Burnscar snarled at him. “He _controlled_ me!”

“Yes, he did. I count that as a failure on your part, by the way. But you will have your chance to test him just like the others. You can try to kill him then. For now, I need to explain the rules.”

Burnscar didn’t look like she’d be able to swallow her anger, but something in the way Jack spoke to her made it clear that she should obey. He was leader of the Nine for a reason. She spun around and stalked away to stand by Cherish. The flames that she had thrown around the parking deck started to die away.

“Thank you, Mimi,” Said Jack. “Here is what you need to know, Regent, Bitch. Each of the Nine’s members get to put our recruits up to a test. Some of us always give the same test. Others, like me, tend to mix things up.”

“And if we fail?” Regent asked, “We die?”

“No, no,” Jack smiled. “Nobody passes _every_ test, and the punishment for failing a test is up to the individual who assigned it. Sometimes death, yes. Sometimes something different. But it’s always _worse._ ” He snapped his fingers. “Speaking of which, have you killed that man yet, Skitter?”

Cherish was the one who answered. “She was indecisive at first, before finding a surge of resolve a moment ago. But nobody nearby has died or even panicked yet. Maybe she’s trying something subtle and it just takes a long time to die to spider bites? Or maybe she resolved to let one of her friends here die to preserve her morality. Hard to say.”

“Hmm. I guess we’ll see. Now, where were we? Ah, yes. First, now that we’ve contacted all of the candidates, Shatterbird will be announcing our presence to the city in…” he checked a pocket watch,” T minus thirty four minutes. I suggest you avoid windows and beaches in the meantime. Second, given the strenuous nature of our audition process, some nominees are reluctant to participate. Two of our recruits this time are heroes, for example, but others have tried to escape before. We can’t have that, so dear Bonesaw has devised an incentive. Show them, would you?”

Bonesaw pulled out a vial of something reddish in color.

“I’ll leave what it does as a surprise,” she said, “but when I leave here I’ll put it somewhere it can surprise the whole city.”

Tattletale slapped a hand onto Skitter’s arm. “Don’t try it. She’s already spread it through the water. Stealing that vial won’t accomplish anything.”

“Spoilsport,” pouted Bonesaw. “It’s always fun watching what the noble ones try to do.”

“Speaking of spoiling fun,” said Tattletale, turning to Cherish. “Those countermeasures that freed Burnscar? They were imperfect because they were designed for your power, not your brother’s. Jack already knows about your long con and it is doomed to fail.”

“What?!” Cherish looked around in horror at the other members of the Nine. “You know? How?”

Jack sighed and dropped his face into one hand. “So disappointing. That was going to be the entertainment of the year! I was so looking forward to watching her pour herself into the attempt, only to see her face when she realized all that effort had been wasted.” He looked up at Tattletale. “And you, my dear, just ruined it.”

Jack made a minute motion, and Tattletale collapsed to the ground in a rapidly spreading pool of blood. Spurts of crimson pulsed out of her neck, which was now very obviously half severed. It was so fast that Charlotte didn’t even have time to scream, much less Tattletale. The dying girl’s mouth was working, but whether to talk or to breathe Charlotte didn’t know.

“No!” Skitter had dropped to her knees, frantically pressing against Tattletale’s slashed throat.

At the same moment Bonesaw shouted “Dibs!” and rushed forward.

“Bentley, Lucy, kill!” ordered Bitch, and the enormous dog monsters pounced on the young girl. The broader bulldog-looking one fell immediately with a long spike of some kind shot up through its mouth and out the top of its head. The narrower one, looking like a cross between a setter and a skinned rhinoceros, got a jaw clamped around Bonesaw’s arm and shook her, tossing the girl across the room.

“So cool!” said Bonesaw with undiminished enthusiasm. “It’s like she isn’t fully alive. I don’t think some of those did anything at all to her!” Charlotte looked back at the monster dog, Lucy, and saw dozens of long needles sticking out of her face and tongue. Lucy was growling at Bonesaw but was having trouble keeping upright. She tried to lunge forward to bite the tinker, but collapsed halfway. Over several seconds her growl faded to nothing.

Regent grabbed Skitter’s arm and started to haul her away. “She’s dead, Skitter. We need to run!” Charlotte also ran, but in the opposite direction, following Minor. The door he was headed to was closer than the one they had come up, and he had a better chance of making it there while carrying Senegal across his back. The door was propped partway open, but Minor wasn’t able to force it open one handed. Coming closer, Charlotte saw that it was twisted out of shape and jammed into the ground. Minor set Senegal down and yanked at it with his full weight.

Behind them, Bitch screamed in fury. “Kill! Kill!” Except for the puppy she still held, all of her dogs ran forward, starting to grow in size. Bonesaw was sitting on the ground with clear rents in the flesh of her arm. As the dogs reached her, she cracked a glass tube and was surrounded by a thin greenish mist. The two dogs closest to her were rendered unconscious immediately. A third snarled at her and stuck its nose into the cloud. When it dropped as well, the other three backed away. Several spider-like robots emerged up the ramp of the parking deck, scuttling over to where the dogs lay on the ground.

“Ink, Magic, Socks! Come!” Tearfully, Bitch called her remaining dogs away.

“Don’t worry,” said Bonesaw. “I won’t take any more of your dogs. I am so excited for your test. I just had the best idea for it! Uncle Jack, don’t let anyone hurt her until after I’ve gotten my turn. She will have to pick a different name, though. The one she has now is just so crude.”

“Very well,” said Jack. “Miss Lindt, you may go.”

Finally, Minor got the door opened and Charlotte raced down the stairs while he picked up Senegal again. A hint of persimmon warned her and she jumped over the last couple steps at the bottom, sailing past the jabbing legs of a spider bot. Minor saw it as he came behind her and stomped with his heavy boots, breaking and twisting its legs. Before it could twist to stab him with anything he kicked it to the side.

Charlotte followed a line of bugs out onto the street and around a corner, running as hard as she could. Half a block ahead she saw Skitter and Regent fleeing in the same direction.

“Oh, Skitter,” called Jack from somewhere to the side. He sounded fairly distant. “I don’t think you managed to kill your target, so you still owe me another death.”

As Skitter passed a café and crossed into an open boulevard, something impacted her legs and torso, sending her tumbling. She picked herself up quickly, though, and made it across the street in Regent’s wake. Moments later Charlotte and Minor had reached the same point, and she smelled a whiff of cologne surround her. She skidded to a stop, managing to avoid the invisible razor edge of cologne that extended past her face and scored a line in the roadway. Somehow Jack had known right where she would be, and was ready to cut her open with his blaster power the moment she emerged from the building’s shadow. Skitter beckoned them to cross the street, and Charlotte shook her head. She held out her arm to block Minor from moving forward as well.

Looking around, she saw the outdoor tables of the café, some of which still had shade umbrellas over them. She ran to one, yanking it out of the hole it occupied in the table, then opening and tilting it so that the umbrella was between her and Jack. She had to hold it close to the canvas so that it didn’t overbalance, but even as heavy as it was she managed to get it spinning in her hands. Once the rods were moving fast enough she nodded to Minor and together they jogged across the street. The same cloud of cologne followed her as she moved, and sharp slices of it carved through the canvas of the umbrella, but most of the cuts were blocked by the spinning rods. She felt a slash graze her thigh and another slice into her shoulder, but they made it across the street without serious injury.

Charlotte dropped the umbrella and the four of them kept running down the street. She was starting to run out of breath and there was a painful stitch in her side, but she didn’t dare stop. Her fear ratcheted up a notch when she sensed a familiar scent approaching from behind them.

“Siberian,” she gasped out and risked a glance back.

Sure enough, the cannibalistic zebra nudist was stalking around the corner of the intersection from the direction of Jack’s attack, silently exuding eau de chicken coop as she prowled.

 _“This way,”_ said Skitter, leading them down an alley that cut through to the next street over. As soon as they had passed, the alley behind them filled with almond darkness. In front of them were three SUVs, one of which had suffered extensive charring.

Two mercenaries accompanied each vehicle, one driving with another “riding shotgun” but with tinkertech assault rifles. Most of the rear doors were open, and Skitter dashed to one where Grue was sitting as he generated the darkness that was hopefully slowing down the Siberian. Minor moved to another and deposited Senegal. Leaning out the window of the burned vehicle was a tall man in a black body suit with a white snake coiled around it.

“Thanks for the rescue, boss,” said Regent, jumping into the other door of that same vehicle.

“You’re lucky I was close enough for Skitter to request my assistance,” said Coil. He turned to Charlotte. “Coming, Bouquet?”

With the chicken coop smell coming ever closer, it wasn’t a difficult choice. Charlotte climbed into the SUV beside Skitter, and all three vehicles accelerated hard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This concludes Arc 2!


	18. Topple 3.1

Charlotte permitted herself a moment to just breathe, to revel in the fact that she _could_ breathe. Against all expectation, she had survived, had managed to escape the Slaughterhouse Nine a second time. Cumulatively, she had now encountered five of the infamous capes. It didn’t even matter that they hadn’t been trying very hard to kill her this time. The way they legitimately did not care, the way they killed and mutilated with utterly casual disregard was part of their horror.

It wasn’t death you feared when you thought about the Nine. Grey Boy had epitomized the idea of a fate worse than death, and his successors had put plenty of effort toward matching his atrocities. But what they could do to you wasn’t really it either, so much as the caprice behind it. Bonesaw was terrifying enough for the horrors she could inflict on people, but even facing her Charlotte had been more frightened of the smile on the girl’s face, the giggle and pout and excitement that were just so viscerally _wrong_. From living in the Bay Charlotte knew very well what hate looked like, what apathy and disdain felt like, jealousy and rage, but those emotions were focused and purposeful and comprehensible. Those had been part of humanity since Cain slew Abel. The unmoored, unhinged, aimless sadism of the Nine was another creature entirely.

Charlotte shuddered and took another breath. She had escaped.

She opened her eyes. Presssed up against Skitter in the seat beside her, Charlotte could feel the girl’s olive aura twisting and distorting as it stretched out around their speeding vehicle. Charlotte had escaped, but the Nine were still here in the Bay. The danger wasn’t past.

“Lisa’s dead.” Skitter’s voice buzzed a bit, but not with insect noises. Just a hoarse throat straining to get the words out.

Grue responded in a subdued tone. “You said.”

“It was so fast. She never had a chance.”

“I didn’t think _any_ of you had a chance. That was the Siberian chasing you.”

“I made the wrong choice. I wasn’t ready to kill, and Jack made Lisa pay for it.”

That… wasn’t how Charlotte remembered things happening, but she wasn’t going to argue about it. The villains had obviously been friends, and survivor’s guilt was a thing. She knew well enough that grief wasn’t something you reasoned with.

Grue apparently disagreed. “Tay--Skitter, it’s the Nine. Your bugs couldn’t do anything to the Siberian.”

“We said that about Lung too. Anyway, it wasn’t the Siberian I needed to kill.”

“Taylor—”

Skitter clenched her jaw tight, but her bugs answered for her. _“Don’t worry. I won’t make that mistake again.”_

“Wait, you can’t mean…? You still want to go forward with _that_ plan? Don’t be stupid. Huge chunks of it are impossible without Tattletale. Most of the contingencies aren’t ready and they all hinged on _active use_ of Tat’s power. Succeed or fail with your part, you’d be killing all of us to even try.”

_“I’ll wait for the right time.”_

“Taylor….”

Charlotte averted her gaze, looking out the window at the city. Then her eyes focused on the window itself. Oh.

“Shatterbird,” she said, drawing the others’ attention. “Jack said that Shatterbird was about to sing. We have to warn everyone.”

Skitter’s head whipped around hard. “Turn around,” she ordered the driver. “Head toward Lord Street.”

“No, ma’am. I take my orders from Sergeant Coombs, or from Coil himself.”

Spiders swarmed out of Skitter’s hair, an ungodly number of them climbing across the ceiling or jumping onto the headrest of the driver’s seat. Charlotte sat very still.

 _“Turn around,”_ repeated Skitter.

“No, ma’am. It doesn’t matter how scary you are. You can’t countermand my orders. It’s more than my life is worth to go against those.”

_“Then stop and let me out!”_

“Skitter--” started Grue.

_“No. They killed Lisa. I’ll be damned if I let them get my Dad, too. Stop the car!”_

“Taylor, think for a second. You’re smarter than this. How far are we from his house? Could you even get there in time?”

“Grue,” Charlotte tried to interrupt. Step one had to be telling the heroes so they could get the word out to the city, and he had the radio from the meeting.

_“I could steal a car, drive myself over there.”_

“And how long would it take to find a working one?”

“Grue,” said Charlotte again. All around her the scent of olives was expanding, twisting, almost writhing.

_“But…”_

“Do you think he’s even home? The construction crews in my territory have been working until sundown and there’s still some light left.”

_“And if I don’t even try? I’m not going to just sit here and hope for the best against the fucking Nine!”_

“Grue!” Still ignored by the two villains, Charlotte gathered her courage and with an effort of will _pushed_ against the olive cloud, trying to replicate what she had done reflexively with Regent. It took a second to find the right mental muscle, but when she did the reaction was immediate. Skitter gave an actual snarl and a dozen wasps zeroed in on Charlotte’s face with a loud warning drone of wings.

“Idiot! Why did you stop? I was warning people with those bugs. I was tracking the Nine! _Boost me_ _now_.” The last words were punctuated by a disturbing wave of insects bursting from the compartment at Skitter’s back.

Charlotte knew she should feel frightened, but the enraged villain beside her was also a skinny girl she sort of knew from school. Getting attacked by Burnscar and Jack Slash in the past twenty four hours had reset her benchmark for fear a bit higher than that. Besides, this sort of open antagonism felt familiar and Charlotte knew from growing up in a city of Empire sympathizers how to respond.

Looking past Skitter, Charlotte made what passed for eye contact with the skull-painted motorcycle helmet. “Grue. If you’re not going to do it, give me the radio so I can tell the PRT console about Shatterbird. They can help coordinate the response.” Having gotten their attention, Charlotte relaxed her grip on her power and allowed the olive wave to come rushing back. Skitter immediately set to shaping it again.

Grue vacillated a moment, looking between Charlotte and Skitter, but apparently thought arguing with his teammate was more important because he produced the radio and handed it across. Charlotte ignored their continued conversation to focus on the device in her hands. It was straightforward to use, so she pressed the button to transmit.

“This is Bouquet, calling in with urgent information about the Slaughterhouse Nine.”

A woman’s voice crackled back over the radio. _< Agent Scarpelli on PRT Console here, go ahead.>_

“I’m with the Undersiders and some of Coil’s people. We just escaped an encounter with Jack Slash. He claimed that Shatterbird was going to sing in thirty four minutes, but I’m not sure how long ago that was. At least fifteen, probably more.”

 _< Console copies. Thank you for the warning.> _There was a pause. _< Your message has been relayed. What else can you tell us?>_

“Bonesaw was present. She claimed to have contaminated the city’s water supply with something she could activate at will. Supposedly it’s collateral to force the heroic nominees to cooperate with their tests, but it’s Bonesaw. She’ll probably set it off regardless.”

_< Understood.>_

Charlotte could hear police and PRT sirens start up in multiple directions. The warning was going out. Hopefully her mom and her grandfather would hear it. What else would be useful to relay?

“Bitch of the Undersiders is the Siberian’s nominee. I don’t know where she is now. She didn’t run when we did. Tattletale is dead.” Charlotte’s voice hitched a little at the end, remembering the way the girl’s rosemary scent had dimmed when Charlotte’s fingers lost contact with her, the wide-eyed blinking as she collapsed in an expanding puddle of her own blood.

One of Charlotte’s hands drifted up to her neck. If Tattletale hadn’t drawn Jack’s attention by betraying his secret to Cherish, or if Charlotte hadn’t had that shade umbrella to block his slash as she ran, she could easily have ended up with her own throat split open.

_< Console copies. Where did this occur?>_

“A parking deck near, uh…. One moment.” Charlotte had to ask their driver where they’d been picked up, then relayed the cross streets to the PRT agent.

_< And to confirm, this was Jack Slash and Bonesaw?>_

“Yes. Also the Siberian, Cherish, and Burnscar.”

 _< Five of them? Holy hell.> _Charlotte didn’t think she was supposed to have heard the muttered curse at the end.

“Skitter says she’s trying to track their movements, but she’s busy at the moment. I don’t know if she’s having any success.” Charlotte really hoped they didn’t ask her to interrupt the continuing whispered argument between Skitter and Grue.

_< That could be useful, but Shatterbird takes priority. We’ll contact you again after the immediate crisis to follow up with that. For now, I advise you to take whatever cover you can that’s away from sand or glass. Warn anyone near you to do the same. If nothing has happened in thirty minutes you can assume the timing you were told was misinformation from Jack.>_

“Okay.”

_< Bouquet, Miss Militia has also asked me to pass a message that you can contact the PRT console after this to reschedule your meetup.>_

“Oh. Thank you. With the attack I honestly forgot about that.”

_< Completely understandable. Get somewhere safe. Console out.> _

Skitter and Grue were still talking to each other, so Charlotte turned to the mercenaries. Bearing in mind the response Skitter had gotten, she went for a more tactful approach. “You heard all that, I assume. What is the plan to avoid Shatterbird’s scream? Where do we abandon the SUV?”

“We don’t,” said the man in the passenger seat. His voice was incredibly deep. “These windows are bulletproof polycarbonate, not glass. It’s safer in here than anywhere else.”

“We’re about two minutes from our waypoint, ma’am” added the driver. “We’ll weather the glass storm there, then continue on to another location unless any members of the Slaughterhouse are still following. We haven’t seen any yet, but in this situation it’s _way_ better to be safe than sorry.”

Slightly reassured that she wasn’t sitting in a death trap and that someone was thinking ahead, Charlotte turned her attention back to Skitter.

“…lost track of them when Bonesaw pulled out some insecticide,” she was saying. “Cherish left my range toward Captain’s hill.” Meanwhile, the olive scent of her power spun around them. It was stretched into a long thin teardrop, with Skitter positioned towards the point. She was swinging it ponderously around them in a wide circle, extending her range to cover a moving pie slice of the city. It took about forty seconds to make a full revolution.

Grue didn’t say anything

“Am I helping at all?” Charlotte asked into the moment of silence. “Have you been able to warn people?”

“Yes,” said Skitter firmly. “ _Don’t_ stop. I haven’t been able to reach my Dad, but I’ve gotten a lot of other people to hide away from windows. The PRT and police have been making announcements and escorting people to safety as well. Hopefully he hears about it from them.”

“So, what now?”

“I’m looking for Shatterbird. That’s the only way I can help him from here. If I can stop her from singing, it won’t matter how many people missed the warnings.”

Charlotte nodded and left her to it. “I won’t distract you, then.” She wasn’t sure why Skitter scoffed at that.

Before long, they had come to a stop in an alley behind a convenience store. There were only two windows to be seen the full length of the alley, one a small vent to a garden level kitchen, the other a second story dormer. Both were at the other end from where they’d parked.

Graffiti on the walls showed that this used to be ABB territory, but a couple Merchant tags were painted over some of the old markings. Two and a half tags, Charlotte realized as she looked closer. Whoever had put them up had run out of paint partway through, judging by the discarded cans kicked against one of the walls. Apparently some gang activities did suffer from the limited supplies that were reaching the city. As far as she knew, spray paint wasn’t part of the standard humanitarian aid provided to disaster areas like the Bay had become.

Charlotte found herself staring at the clock, counting in her head. The fact that she counted to ninety two before a minute ticked over on the dashboard clock indicated that she probably wasn’t measuring the seconds accurately. That’s okay. She didn’t need to be calm for this.

Two minutes (by the clock) later Skitter’s rotating range swung to a standstill.

“Found her!” she announced.

Charlotte keyed the radio immediately. “Shatterbird located,” she sent.

 _< Where?>_ asked Agent Scarpelli. _< I’m patching you through to the full network.>_

Skitter pointed in the direction her range was extending, which happened to be at a downspout on the wall of the alley. “That way, four and a half miles.”

Charlotte boggled a bit. That was a massive difference even from what they had achieved during power testing at the Palanquin. Still, that wasn’t the important part.

“That doesn’t help me without a map and knowing where we are now. Landmarks?”

Skitter held out a hand for the radio, and Charlotte passed it to her.

“Skitter here. Shatterbird is on a roof half a mile west of Clarendon High School. It’s only six stories tall, but it’s the highest vantage point in that neighborhood. I’m sending a large swarm after her, so the location should be obvious to anyone in line of sight.”

_< Copy that.>_

_< Victor here. I can see the cloud of bugs from where I am. It’s within my sniping range. Distract her for just a minute while I set up.>_

“Engaging now.”

For a moment nothing happened. Then, down the alley, both windows simultaneously sprouted spiderweb cracks. A sound like breaking ice echoed through the air.

“Bites and stings aren’t doing anything,” said Skitter, “but a swarm of beetles and moths down her throat stifled her song.”

Charlotte didn’t have time to feel relief before the cracking sound came again, rising in intensity and pitch for several seconds, and both windows splintered, shooting shards of glass in all directions. Even as far away as they were, a few still peppered the SUV and scored its surface.

The echoing roll of breaking glass was accompanied by a welling shout or scream from the entire city. Charlotte hadn’t expected to be able to hear people from so far away, but it was like being near a hockey stadium and hearing the crowd all cheer at once. The difference was that this shout was full of fear and pain. It was an undercurrent she had heard when the sirens went off before Leviathan, only sharper now, synchronized. In this one moment, the city was united in its suffering.

“Dammit,” growled Skitter. “The sound doesn’t just come from her vocal chords.” She keyed the radio. “She’s trying to head back into the building. Take the shot when you have it!”

Silence.

“Victor, can you take the shot?”

Another silence.

 _< Rune here,> _came a shaky voice over the radio. _< V-Victor is dead. He was sighting down the scope when…. Yeah. There’s no shot.>_

Skitter cursed. “I’m not letting her get away.”

_< Coil here. I have men three minutes away. If you can delay her that long, they can take her down.>_

“Copy that.” Skitter handed the radio back to Charlotte.

“What’s going on now?” asked Grue.

“I’m trying to web her up, but it’s far enough away that none of my prepared silk is on hand to use. Her glass cuts through it way too easily.”

“Can you delay her long enough?”

Skitter didn’t answer for a moment. Then, “No. Even getting ants in her lungs isn’t doing much. Has to be Bonesaw’s work. I’ll concentrate on blocking her vision and other senses, but I don’t … Oh hell! I forgot she can use her glass to fly!”

“Shatterbird airborne,” said Charlotte into the radio. “Heading…”she felt the way that Skitter’s power was shifting its shape. “Northeast?”

Skitter nodded confirmation.

 _< That’s away from my forces,>_ said Coil. They won’t reach you in time to help.

There was a full minute where nothing happened that Charlotte could see, her only evidence of the fight being the reshaping olive cloud that extended into the city. She could practically feel the seething frustration that was building in Skitter as the girl tried and failed to take revenge for her friend. Then a sudden tension, followed almost immediately by a complete relaxation of Skitter’s body and power both. The villain slouched against her seatback, shoulders drooping, and Charlotte could smell the olive cloud retracting, reforming into a mostly spherical blob.

_< Miss Militia on scene, reporting in. Shatterbird is down. Two direct hits with fragmentation RPG while she was distracted by the swarm. Kill confirmed.>_

Grue breathed a sigh of relief, and Charlotte shared it. The heroes had come through.

Skitter rubbed her temples and groaned softly. “If this is what those Thinker headaches she always talked about were like, Lisa was even more amazing than I knew.”

Grue nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, she was.”

“Worth it, though. We got her.” Skitter said with satisfaction. “That’s one down.”

Something in the way she said that made Charlotte uncomfortable.


	19. Topple 3.2

The safe house where they slept that night was nothing like the Palanquin. Charlotte’s interest in the mercenary lifestyle shriveled from scant to nothing when she saw the hard chairs and fold-out metal frames that served as bunks in the dingy back room hidden inside a drab office building. The single cooler with bottles of lukewarm water was such a contrast to the beautiful coffee machine behind the bar at the Palanquin that it felt like a message from the universe: “In case the traveling horror show didn’t tip you off, things are worse now.”

The only food was a giant bag of trail mix on someone’s desk out in the office area, and a box of graham crackers that the mercenaries had in their car. Charlotte suspected there was more emergency food stashed somewhere, but she didn’t care. Her appetite was practically nonexistent, crowded out by worries for her family. Had they heard the warnings? Had they gotten somewhere safe before Shatterbird sang? What if they were hurt? Worse, what if they were fine but because they didn’t know where _she_ was they went out looking and ended up in harm’s way? Charlotte could see her mom doing that now that she’d been missing for three whole days. Especially now that the Nine had announced themselves.

Charlotte couldn’t stop imagining her mom running into Burnscar or Stormtiger or Crusader. Every time she tried to think of something else, Tattletale’s bleeding body or Bonesaw’s cheerful shout of “Dibs!” surfaced, and that was almost worse because it was an awful memory not just an awful nightmare.

The floor of the safe house had been covered in glass shards from the fluorescent tube lights in the ceiling when they arrived, but those were easy to sweep out of the way. The windowless room was dark, but the mercenaries had chemical glow sticks so they weren’t stumbling about blind. As uncomfortable as the cots looked, and despite the circular rut her thoughts were stuck in, Charlotte was tired enough that she didn’t expect any trouble sleeping.

Skitter made it much harder.

Over the past couple of days Charlotte had … not gotten used to, but at least acclimated to the masses of creepy crawlies that periodically swarmed over surfaces when Skitter was around, or the clouds of flying insects that seemingly coalesced from nothing and dispersed into invisibility. The way that these movements tended to happen at the edge of Charlotte’s vision made her quite sure that far more creatures were moving about unseen. She’d stopped turning to look behind herself; she almost never caught any bugs creeping up behind her. She knew they were behind her, and it was almost more disturbing _not_ to see them. That just reminded her how they were also probably in front of her with the way that astonishing numbers of bugs could appear and form into solid shapes in the space of a few breaths.

All of that was the “usual” course of things, at least as far as anything could be usual about an intelligent, ever present horde of atavistic fear. Lying in the semi dark of the safe house, Charlotte quickly discovered that an agitated Skitter was a lot more overtly disconcerting.

Skitter herself lay corpse-still on her cot. In the still air of the windowless room, her hair was twitching, waving, as though a ghostly breeze were lifting it from below. Shadows shifted on the floor. When Charlotte turned to face the other way, she came face to face with a writhing line of tiny shapes twisting across the wall.

Charlotte didn’t turn back around, but she did suck in a deep breath, squeezing it out between her teeth as slowly as she could. After a moment to gather her courage, she spoke softly.

“I’m sorry she’s dead.”

The bugs in front of her froze, then spun faster in an intricate fractal dance.

“Me, too,” said Skitter, eventually.

There was silence for a time. Grue and their driver both seemed to be asleep. The other mercenary was somewhere nearby keeping watch. Outside, presumably.

“She saved me, you know. I made dumb choices that almost killed me, but over and over again Lisa pulled me back out of trouble. Lung. Bakuda. Night. Leviathan. She even stopped Armsmaster from having me Birdcaged.”

_Wait, what?!_

“She knew everything about me and was _still_ my friend anyway. And I made dumb mistakes again today, but this time _she_ got the consequences.”

Charlotte was entirely out of her depth with the cape side of things, which was a huge complicating factor. She decided to simply ignore that giant mess and focus on the piece she did understand. As much as it sucked, talking to someone who’d lost a close friend was something she knew how to do.

“I obviously didn’t know her well,” she said, “but she seemed like someone who always had ideas.”

There was never a right thing to say, so it didn’t matter too much what you came up with. The important part was just to be there, to try. Charlotte had found that the best thing was to say something open ended and vaguely positive. If that prompted them to talk, you listened. If not, then either they weren’t ready or you were the wrong person, and your job got easier.

In Skitter’s case, Charlotte was expecting silence and introversion. There was no reason for her to trust Charlotte with her friend’s memories. Instead, Skitter started talking and just didn’t stop. She talked about Lisa’s intelligence (brilliant beyond measure, of course), her kindness (she’d apparently saved Skitter not only from villains and inescapable hellish prison, but also from an awkward conversation with her dad), and her physical appeal (flawless to a degree that Charlotte almost wondered if the two villainesses had been an item, except that everything Taylor said was couched in bitterly envious comparisons). Charlotte was familiar with the way death tended to airbrush a person’s life and character, but this was something else. Skitter had a serious case of hero worship going on.

Could it be called hero worship if the person was a villain? Charlotted debated with herself for a few minutes before focusing back on the latest story. This one Skitter hadn’t even been there for, just lived it vicariously through Tattletale.

“… in the freezer. Regent didn’t though, for a whole week. He kept buying new controllers, and Lisa would intercept the packages. She said he only found them when Grue tried to throw them out.”

It was supposed to be a funny story, but Skitter just sounded angry. Charlotte opted to respond with something vague. “She sounds pretty great,” she tried.

“We made plans together, big plans that _I_ insisted on. And now she won’t even…” Skitter cut off, and the low droning of insect wings rose in pitch.

Charlotte stood and moved to the opposite cot. Skitter shifted a bit, and Charlotte sat beside her. She put an arm around the stick-thin girl, ignoring the smell of olives that grew intense as she did so.

 _“She,”_ said Skitter’s bugs, before cutting off.

They just sat there for a time. Eventually Skitter reached up and pulled off her mask. A group of ants delivered a tissue that she used to wipe her eyes. Finally, in her own voice, broken and small, Taylor said, “She was my only friend.”

Charlotte didn’t dare say “I’m sorry,” because that might be interpreted as a personal defense of how she’d not been Taylor’s friend at Winslow rather than as the condolence she intended. Instead she just sat there, trying to decide whether it was more strange to be comforting Taylor Hebert the violent psych patient or Skitter the supervillain.

After a while Taylor started talking again, quieter than before, sharing more things Lisa had told her. Charlotte almost started arguing when she explained Lisa’s asinine “cops and robbers” view of law enforcement, but managed to bite her tongue and not say anything bad about the girl’s dead friend. Instead, Charlotte just ranted internally to herself.

As far as she could tell, the philosophy boiled down to, “We can get away with it, so it must not be very wrong. The heroes don’t care that we’re committing small crimes, since they only focus on major threats like the Empire and ABB.” Way to clear a high bar by being less awful for the city than literal Nazis. Maybe if assholes like you weren’t out there causing problems the authorities would have the resources to actually _do_ something about the major threats. It was pretty obvious that Taylor thought there was more to it than that, though, some wisdom that explained how the world worked.

Charlotte realized she was no longer paying attention to what Taylor was saying, but she let her mind continue to drift, tracing the outlines of Taylor’s power as it shifted around them. The richness of olives surrounded her, soothed her, and cushioned her descent into sleep.

\---0---

When she woke up, Charlotte _really_ needed to pee. She took one of the green glow sticks with her and stumbled through the dim office space to the toilets. The plumbing was working, more or less, which made it a tolerable experience.

Unfortunately, as she washed her hands and combed her fingers through her grossly tangled hair, she remembered the little red vial that Bonesaw had shown them. According to Tattletale, the plague or poison or whatever was already contaminating all of the water in the city. They’d drunk all the bottled water last night, so there wasn’t much choice to avoid it beyond deciding to risk death by dehydration. Honestly, that might be better than whatever horror the biotinker had prepared. But Charlotte wasn’t ready to just give up, and there was a chance the heroes would figure out a counter for it. This was Panacea’s city after all. She could heal almost anything.

Why hadn’t New Wave been at the meeting yesterday? It had primarily been villains plus a Protectorate representative, so it would make sense if the heroes had their own meeting to confer about things. Then again, hadn’t Faultline said that the heroes had called the meeting? If so, wouldn’t they have invited the other hero team? Charlotte couldn’t really remember, and she could make a case for either way. She’d just have to hope that nothing was wrong with New Wave. Beyond the deaths of Shielder and Manpower against Leviathan, that is.

Returning to the room she had slept in, Charlotte saw that only one of the cots was occupied. The soldier who’d taken the first watch was asleep; presumably everyone else was outside. She wandered out to where they’d parked the SUV the night before and heard scuffing above her. A glance showed that their driver was pacing along the roofline, scanning for threats. This road was completely abandoned other than themselves, so it shouldn’t be hard to notice anyone hostile approaching.

Turning away, Charlotte found a brown moth fluttering a few inches in front of her face. As soon as she had seen it, it danced away down the sidewalk and around a corner. She rolled her eyes. This was about as obvious a signal as you could give without forming actual arrows out of bugs… which Skitter had done during the last two cape fights. She glanced up again, and saw that the mercenary was turned away. He didn’t appear to have noticed the moth. Slightly more nervous now, Charlotte sauntered as casually as possible in the direction it had gone.

Behind a neighboring building she found Skitter and Grue having a whispered conference. Skitter was holding the radio, which Charlotte remembered clipping to her apron before she fell asleep. She checked the pockets again to make sure that her cheese knife was still there.

“Good morning, Bouquet,” said Skitter.

“Morning,” Charlotte mumbled.

Grue gave a very slight nod. Charlotte got the impression he was glaring at Skitter from behind the skull faceplate of his helmet.

Skitter waved the radio. “We’ve been discussing some plans with the Protectorate, how to counter the Nine. I told them you were awake. They want to talk to you about meeting up.”

Charlotte took the radio gingerly. “Now?”

Skitter nodded and waved for her to speak.

She pressed the button. “Hello? This is Bouquet.”

The response was immediate. _< Bouquet, this is Miss Militia. I’m glad you are all right.>_

“Thank you, ma’am.”

_< I understand that you are a recent trigger who wants to join the Protectorate. Is that correct?>_

“Um, yes it is. I’d like to be a hero.”

_< That’s wonderful! Can you tell me about your power?>_

Skitter’s emphatically shaking head got the point across.

“I’d rather not over the radio, if that’s okay,” answered Charlotte. “Can it wait until I see you in person?”

 _< Of course,> _said Miss Militia. _ <I look forward to talking about that with you. I’m sorry that we don’t have the luxury of a calmer introduction. We’ll do our very best to help you with become a hero and to keep you safe.>_

Charlotte felt a wave of relief. She hadn’t been lumped in with the Undersiders or with Faultline. She could get the protection she needed.

“How can I meet up with you, ma’am?”

_< I was just discussing that with Skitter. Between responding to Shatterbird’s attack and other preparations, all Protectorate members will be busy for most of the day. Can you meet us at 4:00pm? Skitter has chosen a location where the Undersiders can hand you off for escort to the PRT headquarters.>_

That seemed strange, that they would let the villains choose the location, but maybe this was part of the truce? Skitter was nodding, so presumably 4pm was fine.

“I’ll look forward to it, ma’am.”

_< Thank you, Bouquet. Militia out.>_

Charlotte clipped the radio back onto her apron. Grue huffed, but neither he nor Skitter asked for it back.

Skitter stretched out her shoulders, then held a hand toward Charlotte.

“My head has recovered from yesterday. Would you boost me, please? I need to try to find Rachel and guide her to us.”

Charlotte agreed readily. By sundown she’d be with the heroes, possibly even with her mother. The worst of this nightmare would finally be over.


	20. Topple 3.E

From the Desk of Emily Piggot, Director ENE

_June 1, 2011_

**Status Report: ENE Region**

As observed with other Endbringer attacks, damage to the region is widespread even beyond the direct target where Leviathan made landfall. As the hardest hit location and the most populous, Brockton Bay has received the bulk of federal aid. Analyses and projections for the city itself are contained in a separate document.

The waves accompanying Leviathan’s attack extended north past Portland and south as far as Gloucester. Boston and other areas of the Massachussetts coast were largely spared due to Gloucester Head blocking the waves, but Cape Cod suffered severe damage. The greatest damage outside of Brockton Bay occurred on the coastline and along waterways including especially the Merrimack and Piscataqua rivers, where damage from waves extended as much as forty miles inland. Loss of life was highest in Haverhill, MA due to malfunction of the Endbringer alert system. Infrastructure damage was highest in Newmarket and Durham, NH, where widespread subsidence caused collapse of many buildings and roadways.

Material aid is requested for the majority of the region, as the import of foodstuffs has been interrupted and many areas remain without electricity and/or potable water. Such aid will be administered through FEMA and the National Guard.

Unfortunately, with the PRT and Protectorate occupied heavily in Brockton Bay, local villains in Manchester, NH, Haverhill, MA, and Lebanon, ME have made bids for control. Additional PRT response is required in each of these cities, and in the absence of an overriding emergency, capes and PRT reinforcements will be preferentially routed to those locations.

Please see attachments for compiled damage reports and response requests, including dossiers on the villains in Manchester, Haverhill, and Lebanon. Detailed recommendations for resource allocation outside of Brockton Bay are found on page twelve.

\---0---

_June 8, 2011_

**Casualty Report for Parahuman Incident**

At 1738 hours on the evening of June 8, 2011, Shatterbird sang to announce the presence of the Slaughterhouse Nine in Brockton Bay. In addition to the direct confirmation of the Nine’s presence the previous night, the city benefited from approximately twelve minutes of warning thanks to independent hero Bouquet who, in company with the villain team Undersiders, encountered Jack Slash and heard him gloat about the upcoming attack.

Emergency responders across the city sounded the alarm and warned citizens away from windows and other glass. In addition, the PRT coordinated with local villainous capes under the auspices of a temporary truce against the Slaughterhouse Nine, and many of them spread the word to individuals living in their territories. Thanks primarily to this warning, casualties from the attack were far lower than experienced in other targeted cities, despite initial reports suggesting that the total damage is comparable to other Shatterbird events.

Confirmed deaths: 412 (expected to approximately double as more areas are searched and as wounded succumb to their injuries)

Seriously wounded: 3483

Only 5 PRT members and no Protectorate members were seriously injured in this attack, so response strength remains undiminished from prior to the incident.

Minor or easily treatable wounds are numerous, and could become a serious problem given the lack of hygiene currently available in the city. Nevertheless, those injuries are not an immediate priority compared to the ongoing threat of the Slaughterhouse Nine or the continuing need for post-Endbringer relief.

The areas of the city hit hardest by the attack include the southern FEMA camp (flashlights were being distributed at the time), the Boardwalk area (high volumes of airborne sand combined with an absence of first responders or cooperating capes to warn the residents), and the central business district (inadequate cover from falling window glass). To the extent possible, these regions should be prioritized by medical relief efforts.

\---0---

_June 8, 2011_

**URGENT: Response to Request for WEDGDG Advisement**

Director Piggot,

This summary accompanies detailed responses from the individual Thinkers who were consulted on these questions, along with contextual scales to evaluate and interpret their answers. Overall, the picture is extremely concerning. Brockton Bay has been flagged as high priority, and requests for further analysis will be given precedence as further information comes to light. Please use the internal hotline and provide case number S79QD* when you call to have your request expedited.

In aggregate the response has overwhelmingly confirmed both the accuracy and gravity of your reported precog warning. If Jack Slash leaves Brockton Bay alive, a large portion of the planet’s population will likely die within 1-5 years. This report has been forwarded to the Triumvirate and the Office of the Chief Director with a recommendation that additional resources be allocated for the crisis.

With respect to the biological threat to the city, it appears to be a present and large scale danger, but one that is unlikely to directly cause many deaths. Thinker advisement is to respond as possible to mitigate the contamination of the water supply, but to prioritize more grave or immediate threats.

Signed,

Stephanie R. Dulish

WEDGDG Communication Liaison

\---0---

_June 8, 2011_

**Amendment to State of Emergency:**

_Attention_ : All PRT affiliated personnel

With the arrival of the Slaughterhouse Nine in Brockton Bay, the following amendments and notices have been approved to the standard operating conditions in a post-Endbringer State of Emergency:

Fuel rationing is enhanced, giving priority to armed response over medical response. Exceptions may be authorized by sergeants in a critical, time sensitive situation, but all such decisions will be reviewed closely.

Medical supplies remain a critical resource, and additional materials have been requested from federal agencies, but are unlikely to arrive for at least four days. Please conserve where possible.

Wards will be housed in the PRT HQ rather than with their families. Families of wards may receive accommodation with other PRT affiliates if requested.

Crisis-mode coordination with the National Guard forces, local law enforcement, and other emergency responders is authorized. A central switchboard will connect the dispatch and triage of the separate organizations. In the event of severed communications, use of the contingency integrated chain of command is authorized. PRT members will have authority to direct other responders. They, in turn, will be expected to obey orders of high-ranking members of those other organization until communications are restored.

Due to inadequate manpower, former and affiliate members of the PRT on reserve status are called and accepted into active service. They will be organized into two adjunct companies under the command of experienced PRT field officers.

Signed,

P. Renick

Deputy Director

\---0---

_June 9, 2011_

**Deployment Authorization**

In light of the WEDGDG confirmation of a possible extinction-level threat, extraordinary measures are authorized to gain access to the source of relevant precog warnings. A joint Protectorate and PRT operation has been planned under the primary command of Miss Militia. Involved units will receive briefings at 1300 hours today, June 9, 2011. The villain Skitter has provided critical intelligence for this operation, and temporary cooperation with her team (the Undersiders) is permitted for the duration of this action.


	21. Topple 3.3

The hardest part of waiting for four o’clock was that there was no way to check the time. Phones were shattered and nonfunctional, nobody was wearing a wristwatch, and power was out in most of the buildings they passed. Charlotte was left to guess at the passing time by the sun’s movement and by counting their steps.

There were a lot of steps to count, since they’d been walking most of the day. Coil’s mercenaries had driven off around midmorning under orders from their boss, and hadn’t offered the others a ride. That was fine with Charlotte. She was far more comfortable without well-armed soldiers escorting her everywhere she went. She still didn’t love being in the company of villains, but she was starting to get a handle on Skitter’s personality, and felt relatively confident in her ability to avoid pissing her off. Grue was another story, but his evident anger and apprehension hadn’t been aimed her way yet.

The three of them had walked five or six miles north to the trainyard, where they found Rachel (Bitch apparently didn’t care who knew her civilian name), who had returned to her base of operations. She had three minions with her, including an older teen girl, a college-age guy, and an intimidating muscled cape with a bear trap wrapped around a jaw full of teeth filed to points. When he introduced himself as Biter, Charlotte quickly decided she didn’t want to see his power in action. All three minions were openly relieved to have Skitter show up to wrangle Rachel’s foul temper.

The teen, a willowy young woman named Lauren who surprised Charlotte by acting just as deferential to her as to the other capes, disappeared into the kitchen and produced an unexpectedly well-cooked meal of pasta and steamed broccoli, accompanied by sliced carrots. The crisp carrots were the best thing Charlotte had eaten in a while except for those grapes at the Palanquin, but the broccoli was also surprisingly good. Lauren had somehow managed to make it delicate but not mushy, and Charlotte savored the texture of the little florets. The pasta was pasta. Biter said something complimentary about the flavor, but Charlotte couldn’t appreciate it.

Rachel and Skitter went for a long walk during which they had a talk that, for Rachel’s part, had all the dynamic range of an airhorn, varying all the way from angry shouting at the low end to enraged screaming at the other. Charlotte didn’t pay much attention, but she overheard enough to understand that the two were planning to hunt down the Nine in vengeance for the dogs Bonesaw killed (and Lisa, as an afterthought).

Targeting the Nine like that sounded idiotic to Charlotte. People had tried to kill members of the Slaughterhouse Nine for decades. Even when they succeeded, it rarely turned out well for the person who attacked them. The Nine were varied enough in ability that they were likely to have a counter to any particular cape that came after them. Charlotte was glad that she would be with the heroes before Taylor and Rachel ran off to get themselves killed.

After they’d eaten and rested, they set out again towards the meeting spot. This time Rachel came with them, three dogs in tow. She kept Ink, Magic, and Socks at heel, reprimanding them if they ever moved to investigate anything more than a few steps away from her.

Periodically, Skitter asked Charlotte to boost her power so she could check their surroundings, make sure there weren’t any dangers approaching. Generally, this meant calling Charlotte back from where she was practically speed walking out in front of the group, stepping quickly and almost bouncing with the anticipation of an escort to the PRT headquarters where she could get cleaned up, change out of her makeshift costume, and get in touch with her mother. Probably in that order, but she wasn’t picky.

At one point she even asked about moving faster, but Grue had instead encouraged her to slow down.

“We don’t want to show up first. Waiting around the meeting spot wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“We picked the location,” said Skitter quickly, “so the heroes will be more comfortable if we let them get in position first. If they have time to check out the area before we arrive, they’ll be less concerned about a possible ambush or betrayal.”

That made some sense, and explained why the abandoned construction site they finally reached in late afternoon was already occupied by Miss Militia and two armored personnel carriers bearing the PRT logo. It did not explain the additional presence of Battery, Assault, Triumph, and the metal boy from the meeting on the lake, or why there were three more PRT vehicles parked at a moderate distance. The PRT squads were spread around with weapons out, facing in all directions but especially towards the approaching villains.

“Skitter?” Charlotte asked. “I’m pretty new to all this cape stuff, but doesn’t this seems like overkill for a simple pickup?”

Skitter didn’t answer immediately. She gestured for Bitch to remain behind while the rest of them walked forward. Miss Militia, Triumph, and a thin PRT officer also stepped forward, walking to join them in the middle of the lot.

“They’re not all here for you,” Skitter muttered finally.

Charlotte kept her eyes on the approaching heroes until she stumbled over a gouge in the ground and had to watch her feet to keep from falling. Looking down, she realized that the ground wasn’t the only thing torn up. Twisted metal and shattered concrete was scattered around, and the divots kicked up by individual pieces didn’t show the sort of wear that they should have if this damage were weeks old.

“Leviathan didn’t do this, did he?” Charlotte whispered.

“No,” answered Grue. “Crawler did when he attacked Coil’s underground base right beneath us.”

“What?” Charlotte’s attention snapped to Skitter. “What’s going on?”

“We’re attacking,” Skitter whispered. “Coil’s a Thinker, so we compartmentalized information. Don’t worry, you don’t need to do anything.”

Charlotte stumbled to a standstill, clutching her chest. What made Skitter think she could pull something like this? No wonder Grue was upset with her.

Skitter ignored her and continued for several more steps, nodding to the heroes who were now within easy earshot. She transitioned into her swarm voice, addressing the whole assemblage.

_“I’m glad we can cooperate on this. Is everything ready?”_

“Yes,” said Miss Militia. “What’s the situation down below?”

“While I have no doubt that Skitter could give you an accurate picture,” said a new voice, “I flatter myself that I may be better able to answer your questions. You are here to speak with me, I presume?”

As he spoke, Coil emerged from a severely damaged concrete pipe sticking out of the ground. He was flanked by a dozen mercenaries in body armor.

“I have to say,” he continued, coming to a stop midway between the two groups, “this is not how I imagined you honoring the truce we agreed to yesterday. Did we not agree to avoid attacking one another until the Nine are dealt with?”

“Coil. Skitter has given us information about Dinah Alcott that contradicts your claims about her willingness and her living conditions. We are here to demand that you release her to us.”

“Is that so? I’m surprised you are taking the word of someone who betrayed both her teammates and the authorities, and who broke the Endbringer truce to do it. Why would you trust her?”

“She’s given us enough to verify several of her claims,” said Miss Militia, “and even if she is wrong, your culpability in this doesn’t matter. The prediction you reported regarding the possible end of the world is too critical. We cannot allow a precog of that level to prop up the local ambitions of a minor villain when she could instead be providing information to prevent a global apocalypse. We have a mandate from WEDGDG and from the cabinet, through the PRT, to procure and protect the source of that warning. If you do not yield her to us, we are prepared to take her by force.”

“I see.” Coil seemed unimpressed. “I suppose that is hardly surprising, with the rumors that your predecessor leading the Protectorate ENE _also_ broke the Endbringer truce. The hypocrisy runs just as deep as I would expect from this country’s ‘defenders.’ Nevertheless, I’m afraid I cannot accommodate you. Miss Alcott is not here. I was actually in the process of abandoning this base when you arrived, as the damage inflicted by Crawler’s attack has left it unsuitable for my needs.”

Triumph started forward angrily. “Where is Dinah?” he demanded. The PRT officer caught his arm, holding him back.

 _“She’s here,”_ said Skitter. _“There’s hidden room, a void where he’s tried to sterilize against my bugs, but I got enough through to sense her.”_

“Thank you, Skitter,” said Miss Militia. “Coil?”

“So aggressive. I am disappointed.” He sighed. “If Skitter has been revealing secrets, I suppose there’s no reason not to unveil this one.”

Suddenly the mercenary to his left was gone, replaced by a thin blonde cape with a red sun emblem. As fast as blinking, three more capes appeared where mercenaries had stood. A tall muscular guy, a furry purple toad with a prehensile tail, and a smirking teen with a top hat.

“You know by now that the Travelers are working at my behest. I truly doubt your ability to take anything I have by force, much less a child whose continued health and safety you value.”

“Bastard! If you hurt her…”

“Triumph, quiet!” Miss Militia ordered. Turning back to Coil, she said, “I urge you to comply peaceably. We have been instructed and authorized to escalate to lethal force as necessary. In addition….” She made a small move with her wrist.

A disorienting twist of lavender threaded over their heads and descended towards Coil. Charlotte took a step backwards while a white glove somehow reached through that space and tapped the cape in the top hat, freezing him in place. Coil had a second to jump to one side, starting to shout before Clockblocker tagged him as well.

Everyone else immediately raised their weapons. A blistering sun burst into existence between the groups, Grue’s shadow covered everything up to waist height, and Miss Militia was aiming something enormous at the people in Coil’s group.

“…you aren’t the only one with hidden allies,” she finished.

The sun was growing larger, brighter, more difficult to look past.

“Last chance,” Miss Militia warned. “Stand down.”

“I hate fighting heroes, but we really can’t let you enter this base,” said the remaining male villain.

“Are you serious, Ballistic? Surely you can’t be that loyal to Coil,” argued Triumph. “Just stand aside and we won’t have to engage you.”

Ballistic shook his head. “This goes beyond any agreement with him. We have interests that we have to protect, and letting you inside goes directly against that.” He held up a fistful of ball bearings. “If you are threatening lethal force against us, we have no choice but to respond in kind.”

Miss Militia adjusted her aim to center on Ballistic. “Stand down and we won’t touch anything else in the base. You have five seconds.”

All around the construction site, PRT soldiers readied their weapons. Looking around, Charlotte could see that more mercenaries had appeared on the periphery.

“Four.”

“Three.”

Charlotte tensed to run.

“Two.”

“WAIT!” The PRT officer beside Triumph stepped forward into the middle. “Wait, please. We can work this out.” He reached up and removed his reflective helmet to reveal an earnest, dark skinned face.

“What are you doing, Commander?”

“I’m working to resolve this situation, ma’am.” He turned to Ballistic. “I’m a trained negotiator. Nobody needs to die today.”

Ballistic nodded, but didn’t lower his hand. “I’m listening.”

Charlotte was gratified to see that she wasn’t the only one relieved at the loosening tension. The cape generating that miniature sun sighed loudly and let her shoulders droop. She didn’t dismiss her sun, though.

“Our mission today is to retrieve Dinah Alcott. As Miss Militia has said, we are prepared to take extreme measures if we are prevented from doing that. However, our mission is not to combat or arrest anyone here, or even to enter the base under our feet. Surely we can come to an accommodation here. We will not take Coil or anyone else into custody who does not initiate violence against us. Please don’t force our hands.”

Ballistic turned to his teammates. “Genesis? Sundancer?” The toad thing gave a considering nod, which was very weird to watch since so much of it was head anyway, and only about eight inches of the thing could be seen above Grue’s mist. Sundancer, on the other hand, nodded almost frantically.

“The Travelers will agree to this. I will accompany whoever enters the base while they retrieve the girl, and escort them safely if they will agree not to enter any area I declare off limits.”

The three capes walked to the side, no longer barring entrance to the heroes. Unfortunately, the mercenaries weren’t moving away, instead closing ranks.

“We’ve been hired to do a job and to follow orders,” one said. “And the person who could order us to stand down is frozen in time right now. So either you wait to give him the same offer, or you see what it’s like to fight room to room through tight quarters.”

Something about the situation seemed off to Charlotte. She’d watched people de-escalate and pacify her whole life, and this was going far too smoothly compared to her experiences with Empire thugs and sympathizers. As the negotiation continued she started looking around for anything she might have missed. Maybe the mercenaries were just more professional and disciplined? Even if so, this seemed an extreme effect.

It took her an embarrassingly long time to realize that Skitter and Grue were no longer standing near her. When had that happened? There were so many different cape scents all muddled together that she hadn’t noticed the absence of olives, and Grue’s almond scented darkness was surrounding her on all sides.

Between the odd way the negotiations were proceeding and the suspicious absence of the Undersiders, Charlotte decided it would be prudent to move away from the standoff. She took slow steps backward, feeling her way through the impenetrable almond cloud.

A sudden shout as Coil lurched into motion again startled Charlotte and she tripped, falling into the disorienting blackness of Grue’s cloud. It probably only took her a few seconds to regain her feet, but it felt like longer with almond filling her ears and eyes and lungs. Surfacing, she remained crouched to present a lower profile.

Coil and the PRT officer were not shouting at each other, but their voices held a hostile tone. Charlotte took the opportunity to move even farther away while everyone was focused on that confrontation. Scanning the construction site, Charlotte was the first to notice the swirl of insects descending from the sky. Shouts and the sounds of soldiers repositioning themselves followed as everyone else caught sight of the quickly forming bug clone.

 _“Mission accomplished, Miss Militia,”_ announced Skitter. _“We have extracted Dinah through Grue’s darkness and are waiting with her at the southern exit.”_

“Squad two!” ordered the PRT commander. “Retrieve them now.”

Coil had pulled out a radio and was trying different frequencies to contact his men, but the signal didn’t go through to any of the underground mercenaries. Everyone was brandishing weapons again in the flurry of activity as two of the PRT vehicles accelerated toward the apparently rescued girl. Charlotte felt for her own knife in the apron’s pocket.

It was then that the top hat cape unfroze. He took one look at the milling chaos and started using his power to teleport people around the lot, disorienting PRT members and sending the heroes to the farthest edges of the lot. Charlotte saw Assault appear in the cab of one of the personnel carriers, facing the wrong direction and crammed with his back against the steering wheel. At the same time, the driver appeared half sitting where Assault had been and promptly fell into Grue’s darkness.

“Trickster, stop!” yelled Ballistic.

Trickster didn’t, but in those few chaotic instants, the PRT members had recognized the threat and focused their weapons on the cape. A scent of brackish mud twisted in her gut, and suddenly Charlotte was standing next to Coil, staring down the muzzles of a dozen rifles. Coil was quick on the uptake, wrapping an arm around Charlotte’s neck and placing a gun to her head. Oh, God.

Everyone stopped.

“We’re at an impasse, I see. I believe you know what my demand will be. If you want this young hero to survive, you will return Miss Alcott to my care.”

Charlotte’s first instinct was to suppress her power, desperately pushing all the scents away from her, hoping not to boost Coil. But … something was wrong. Coil didn’t smell like anything. He wasn’t a cape. She tried to say something, but his arm on her windpipe prevented her from getting the words out.

The spike of fear that shot through Charlotte’s veins when Coil had grabbed her was surprisingly mild compared to the past several days, and was tempered by a festering anger. Between the suffocating hopelessness of the merchant rally, the blinding panic of Burnscar’s attack, and the horrifying dread of Jack Slash, a bunch of professional soldiers handling guns in a way that hadn’t gotten anyone shot simply didn’t compare. Yes, there was an instinctive fear that accompanied guns, but hostages were rarely killed right in front of heroes like this. Along with her fear, Charlotte had a surprising kernel of hatred for Trickster, who had put her in this position. She’d been trying to keep her distance, remove herself from the standoff, but the freaking teleporter had pulled her right back into the center of things.

Teleporters were the absolute _worst_. Whizzer, Burnscar, Trickster, all three had done their best to ruin her life.

As the skinny PRT commander argued with Coil, Charlotte’s attention was captured by a cloud of gnats forming right in front of her face. It shaped itself into an octagon. A stop sign, she realized. A moth flew past it and down into the darkness, brushing against the hand that was tightly gripping the two pronged knife. The middle of the octagon coalesced into five dark dots. One disappeared as the gnats in it dispersed. The next one followed suit, leaving only three.

A countdown, she realized! _Two_. Was Skitter insane? What about the gun? _One_.

Charlotte was probably insane herself, because she trusted that Skitter had a plan. As the last cluster of gnats dispersed and the octagon changed to a circle, Charlotte jabbed the knife back over her shoulder as hard as she could, feeling it connect with the hand holding the gun. Coil cried out and his arm tightened painfully on her throat, but his shout didn’t cover the metallic click behind her. In a panic she swung the knife again, but Coil pushed her away before the stab could connect.

Looking back, Charlotte’s eyes sought the gun first, where she saw a large bug smashed under the hammer. Skitter had saved her life, but that was entirely too close.

Coil and his mercenaries pulled back toward the entrance of his base.

Several PRT officers came forward and pulled Charlotte away, walking her quickly to the edge of the construction site. That wouldn’t help if Trickster was still causing trouble, but she could hear him arguing loudly with Ballistic about needing to keep their deal with Coil, so it didn’t seem like he was an active combatant at the moment. Assault and plenty of PRT officers were watching the Travelers and Coil’s people closely for signs of violence.

A PRT personnel carrier approached, with Skitter, Grue and Triumph in the back with an unconscious, sickly looking girl who couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve. Her brown hair was greasy and long, clearly uncared for. Most notably, needle marks dotted her forearms. The villains jumped out when the vehicle stopped, and a group of PRT officers swarmed in, including several with medic insignia. The skinny commander who had tried to negotiate climbed into the cab.

With an aroma of pumpkin pie dancing from her hip to her hands and back again, Miss Militia approached from the side. “Triumph, Weld, escort Dinah to PRT HQ. Have Vista and Clockblocker shadow you on the roofline.” When they had acknowledged her, she turned to Charlotte. “Bouquet, are you all right?”

“I … think so,” Charlotte said. Her voice was shaking a bit, and her hand still hadn’t let go of the cheese knife. She shuffled closer to the woman, creating a bit of space between her and the large PRT officers and turning to keep the closest ones in her line of sight.

Miss Militia tipped her head to indicate concern. “I am very sorry that you got caught in the middle of this. It shouldn’t have happened. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a good way to rendezvous with you separately from this operation without compromising our secrecy. We understand that Coil has informants in the PRT itself, so we had to organize this with recently activated reserve members, which added to the complexity.”

Charlotte nodded, not quite trusting her voice yet. While on the surface it sounded reasonable, who could she have possibly betrayed their secrecy to? She’d been with Skitter all day long, and the reckless bug girl was obviously in the loop having planned everything. In fact, Miss Militia probably didn’t know Charlotte had been kept in the dark. Her apology had been about having Charlotte present, not keeping her uninformed. Why had Skitter been so needlessly secretive? It was stupid! Charlotte didn’t know what she might have done differently if she’d understood what she was walking into, but surely she could have reacted faster and maybe avoided being taken hostage. Thank God she wasn’t going to be with the Undersiders any longer. She took a few deep breaths to slow her heartbeat.

“We’re splitting into two groups, now,” Miss Militia told her. “Triumph and the Wards are escorting Dinah back to the PRT building, while Assault and I stay here a bit longer to discuss some things with the Undersiders, and possibly the Travelers if they are willing. I encourage you to go with Dinah, but it is your choice to go where you feel safest.”

As eager as she was to get to the PRT building, Charlotte felt like she could trust and understand Miss Militia the most out of all the heroes. She was a female, Middle Eastern hero in Brockton Bay. Maybe if Shadow Stalker were there she’d have chosen someone closer to her own age, but probably not. Miss Militia was powerful. It would be good to thank Skitter as well. Despite her frustrating secrecy, she had saved helped Charlotte from Coil and kept the gun from firing.

On the other hand, staying close to the base where Coil and Trickster had retreated would counteract any feeling of safety she got from staying by Miss Militia and Assault.

In the end, the deciding factor was disappointingly petty. Except for Dinah, all of the capes in the vehicle gave off offensive, nauseating smells, and Charlotte didn’t want to be in an enclosed space with them. Miss Militia’s pumpkin pie scent, together with Skitter’s olive and Grue’s almond, made for more pleasant surroundings.

“I’d rather stay with you, Ma’am,” she said.

“Very well.” Miss Militia turned to a PRT officer nearby and said, “Tell Commander Calvert that he is clear to depart.” A few moments later the truck carrying Dinah trundled down the road in caravan with two others.

Charlotte stepped closer to Miss Militia, eyeing the furry purple toad that was the only cape remaining aboveground in the construction site, and the handful of mercenaries near it. That hadn’t gone exactly smoothly, but she didn’t really trust Coil and the Travelers to give up that easily. She’d be sticking close to the heroes until they reached the PRT building.


	22. Topple 3.4

Charlotte sat in the relative privacy of the troop transport, alone with her thoughts and two faceless PRT officers. Her hands had stopped shaking, and her breathing had evened out, but the fluttery feeling under her ribs hadn’t gone away. It felt like her heart was hyperventilating, which was a weird enough image that she was probably not thinking clearly either.

Her stomach twisted, and she imagined it walking to the wall of her abdomen to reset the sign counting “ **00** days since I stabbed someone.”

Charlotte wiped her hands on her apron, which was a mistake since she could feel the two-pronged knife through the cloth, lurking in her pocket for the next fight. She had an urge to throw it as far from herself as possible, but it felt like the insane urge to step off a ledge or walk into traffic, the morbid pondering of “what if I threw caution to the winds and just committed myself to uncontrollable fate?”

Maybe that’s what was so disturbing, that her forked dagger had become a visceral safety net, a proven means of protection. Minorities in the bay who relied on physical confrontation for safety didn’t last long. Were the rules different for capes? Or was she making a mistake by grasping so tightly to the means that had worked to protect her in the short term?

These thoughts weren’t getting her anywhere. She needed a … not a distraction. She needed comfort. She needed advice.

She needed her mom.

Charlotte had planned to try to contact her family from the safety of the PRT building after debriefing with the heroes, but who knew how long that would take? The only real reason not to try now was out of concern for her identity, but she had already been outed to two villain groups, and the Protectorate and PRT would learn who she was in short order since she was joining them as soon as possible. There was minimal danger in accelerating that by a few hours. Conversely, giving the PRT a vested interest in protecting her family might help quite a bit. Charlotte pulled out her radio.

“Central Console, this is Bouquet with a … a low priority request.”

_< Hello, Bouquet. Agent Scarpelli here. Can you confirm that you are still with Miss Militia and Assault?>_

“Yes.” Charlotte looked out the open back of the transport towards where the two heroes were having an intense conversation with the Undersiders. Assault was gesturing with large arm movements that just happened to invade Grue and Skitter’s personal space. Grue was obviously trying not to look intimidated by the threat that wasn’t a threat. Skitter, of course, just stood there creepily still, ignoring the striker/brute who was basically waving his hands in her face. She was looking steadily at Miss Militia. “They are nearby, but both are occupied at the moment.”

_< Thank you, Bouquet. That’s fine. What do you need?>_

“I’ve been, well, missing for four days. If someone is near the shelter on Prospect street, I’d appreciate them letting my family know that I’m safe now. And checking to see if they were hurt in Shatterbird’s attack.”

_< I understand. There are several officers in that area that could do this, but are you sure you want to give out your family’s names and locations like this? The PRT takes pride in its discretion about cape identities, but this situation is chaotic enough that we can’t guarantee your privacy.>_

Charlotte took a deep breath, then nodded. “Yes, I’m sure. The sun is going down and I want them to know before they try going out to look for me after dark.”

_< All right. For extra security, I’m going to ask you to switch your radio’s encryption key.>_

Charlotte looked over the radio with some confusion. “How do I do that?”

One of the officers in the transport with her waved a hand, holding it out for the radio.

“David Thompson here,” he transmitted once she’d handed it over. “I can help Bouquet adjust her settings.”

There was a short back-and-forth where Agent Thompson’s birthdate was used to select the encryption key, then he showed Charlotte how to switch the settings appropriately. Soon Charlotte was holding her newly secured radio and the two officers had moved a short distance away and started a conversation of their own to give her a semblance of privacy where she wouldn’t be overheard quite as easily.

 _< What is the message you’d like delivered? Will it come from your cape or civilian identity?> _asked Agent Scarpelli.

“Just from me. Charlotte me, not Bouquet.” God, that felt weird to say, to have to specify her identity like that. “My name is Charlotte Raimi. Please say that I’m safe and I am with the PRT.”

_< Of course. Who should I have the officer speak to?>_

“My mother is Laura Raimi. If she’s not there you can leave a message with Jared Kerr or Chonise Willems. Both are trusted family friends and are staying at the same shelter.”

_< Could you spell those names for me?>_

Charlotte did so, then Agent Scarpelli signed off with a promise to contact her soon.

While she waited, Charlotte watched Ballistic come back out of the underground base and talk to the purple toad thing. She wasn’t good at reading toad body language, but she thought it looked indecisive, making short little hops back and forth while he spoke. Ballistic, on the other hand, displayed obvious frustration.

After a few minutes Miss Militia approached the Travelers, trailed by Grue. The mercenaries near them looked tense, but didn’t object as the two capes came closer. Skitter and Assault kept their distance; Bitch was still at the edge of the lot with her dogs.

_< Bouquet?>_

Charlotte jumped when Agent Scarpelli’s voice crackled out of her radio. She tried to pick it up, only to knock it out of her lap onto the floor of the transport because somehow that stupid cheese knife had ended up clutched in her hand again. She shoved the knife back into its place in her apron pocket, then snatched up the radio.

“I’m here.”

_< I’m connecting you to Officer Hong now, who is with your mother.>_

Almost immediately Agent Scarpelli’s voice was replaced by a much more familiar one.

_< Charlotte? Are you there?>_

“Yes, mom. It’s me. I’m okay.” Charlotte found herself smiling.

_< Oh, I’m so relieved. Where were you? Where are you now? Are you coming back tonight?>_

“Not tonight. It’s going to be dark soon. I’m with the PRT now, and I’d feel safer with them. They said I can stay at their headquarters downtown for a while.”

 _< Really?>_ The suspicion was veiled, but Charlotte knew what her mother was thinking. The presence of Officer Hong was evidence enough that the PRT were actually involved, so Charlotte probably wasn’t under duress. But why would the PRT go to the effort of helping one civilian connect with her family with everything else that was happening in this disaster of a city.

“Are you, are you somewhere private, mom?”

 _< Yes.> _There was resignation in that voice. _< You triggered?>_

“Yeah. I… yeah.”

_< Oh, Char, I’m so sorry.>_

“I am… not hurt. Much.” Charlotte added the qualifier when she remembered the gauze around her burned arm. “I was abducted. By the Merchants. And then, well, honestly a ton has happened and I can’t believe it’s only been a few days. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you. Maybe, can you meet me at the PRT building in the morning?”

_< Of course, honey. I’ll be there.>_

“Thanks, mom. I love you.”

Charlotte used her floral scarf to dab at her eyes, then put the radio away in her apron. She sat quietly for another ten minutes while the discussions wrapped up outside. Eventually the groups separated and Assault approached the transport. He smelled like fennel.

“Thanks for your patience, Bouquet. We’re about ready to head out.”

A few more PRT officers entered the vehicle, but a sudden heavy thump on the roof drew everyone’s attention. Shouts from outside warned of a “Mover Brute!” and the officers sprang into motion. Charlotte was focused on the scent that had accompanied the sound: a melding of salmon and garlic, overlaid with a hint of persimmon. Persimmon meant Bonesaw.

An axehead clove through the roof of the vehicle, parting the armored plating with apparent ease. Instead of retracting through the hole for another blow, the thing dissolved into ash leaving a patch of sky pouring through the top of the transport.

Looking out the back, Charlotte saw a large, muscled man with scars and bulging tumors swinging a two-handed axe into the body of the purple toad. It popped and fizzled into wisps of thready light. Ballistic and the mercenary beside him leapt away, but the scarred man in front of them dissolved into ash as an identical copy appeared behind them, already swinging.

A huge hole tore through his chest and he dissolved to ash again, and Charlotte saw Miss Militia fire again with an enormous shotgun before her power reformed into a belt-fed machine gun to kill more of the teleporting clones.

The man looked more or less like the description of Hatchet Face that had been presented at the Truce meeting, but the power was a close match to Oni Lee’s. That scent of persimmon gave Charlotte a bad feeling about what had happened. In fact, when one of the clones appeared facing away from her, Charlotte could see a distorted, tortured face with Asian features gaping from Hatchet Face’s shirtless back.

“Watch for Bonesaw!” she yelled to Assault, and really to anyone who might listen. Odds were the sadistic girl would not be far from her creation.

A child’s tittering answered her, and she looked up to see Bonesaw jumping off an upper floor of the incomplete building in the center of the construction site. The little blonde girl was hand in hand with the Siberian, and they somehow landed gently on a pile of debris without any impact despite the distance they had dropped. Hatchet Face was nowhere to be seen.

“I’m glad to know I’m expected,” gushed Bonesaw. “It’s so nice of you to invite me down like this!” Once again, Charlotte found the wide grin to be the most disturbing thing about Bonesaw, even worse than the bloody shoulder bag she was carrying.

The guns that everyone was carrying were just as ineffectual as they had been last time Charlotte saw the Siberian, and the entire group carefully stepped backwards to keep as much distance as possible from the invincible woman. A few stragglers kept shooting, whether out of fear or hope or desperation Charlotte didn’t know. Neither Bonesaw nor the Siberian seemed to notice.

Bonesaw looked around at everyone who had gathered and cheered. “Rachel! I’m _so_ happy you’re here. I was hoping we’d bump into you while we were out running errands.”

Charlotte followed her gaze to where Bitch stood with her three dogs, all of whom had nearly doubled in size, their skin splitting as muscle and bone protruded.

“I’ll kill you,” said Bitch.

“Oh, don’t be like that,” chided Bonesaw. “After seeing your puppies in person, I’m _really_ excited about having you on the team. Sibby made a great choice picking you.”

“You killed my dogs!”

“No, I didn’t! Well, one of them. But the others are all fine. That’s why I wanted to find you, so I could tell you where to go get them.” She pulled something out of the shoulder bag and tossed it on the ground. It scuttled across several iron girders towards Bitch before climbing onto a large concrete block where it froze. Those standing closest shied further away.

The thing was about the size of a deflated volleyball and looked like the spider bots Charlotte had seen in the parking deck, but this one was painted purple and black, and had a very recognizable blonde ponytail trailing off the back. It scuttled in a circle, revealing the skin of Lisa’s face attached to the front, arranged into a decently accurate smirk. Two of the bot’s regular manipulator arms extended through the open eye holes, and what looked like plastic googly eyes had been attached to the penultimate joints, jiggling around as the bot moved.

“If you follow that, she’ll lead you to your dogs. That’s where my test for you will be, but like I said I want you on the team, so it won’t be a real test. More of a gift, honestly.”

Bonesaw whispered something to the Siberian, who scooped her up and held her on one shoulder. Once settled in her new perch, she turned to address everyone else. “Sorry, I’d love to stay and play with all of you, but we actually do have an important errand to run. It’s time to meet Crawler’s candidate. Hack Job!”

The Hatchet Face–Oni Lee mashup, Hack Job apparently, appeared in front of her.

“Lead us in!”

Hack Job turned and in a series of cloning teleports disappeared down the damaged tunnel into Coil’s base. Almost immediately the chatter of rifles and fearful shouts echoed out through the hole.

“Well, ta ta!” said Bonesaw, and she waved as the Siberian carried her into the base at a lazy stroll.


	23. Topple 3.5

Charlotte stood in the open back of the PRT transport, one still figure drowning in a maelstrom of action and near panic. Miss Militia and Assault were shouting orders and watching for threats. PRT officers were calling on radios and running into formations and preparing weapons. Grue was nearly grappling with Bitch, telling her to wait, and Skitter was corralling the horrific spider bot with her bugs. Ballistic had sprinted away and disappeared through a different doorway.

None of that would do any good. The Siberian was just too strong. Charlotte wanted to run and hide, wanted to escape and take refuge in the PRT building. That was what Miss Militia had ordered her to do, too. A handful of PRT agents would leave to escort her back while the rest stayed to fight the Nine.

The Siberian was invulnerable. She had killed Hero, clawed out Alexandria’s eye. She had survived every mundane and parahuman attack for decades. She was untouchable, and the heroes weren’t strong enough to stop her or even slow her down. She was just like Leviathan.

Charlotte knew what happened next, because it was seared into her memory from the last time this played out. The monster would break through every defense, crush every hero, then tear into the shelters where huddling civilians were cornered in rising water.

Because the heroes weren’t strong enough.

Charlotte looked at her hands. That was the problem everywhere, wasn’t it? The Endbringers, the Empire, the villains, all of them were unassailable because they were too powerful compared to the heroes. But Charlotte could change that. Her power made other capes stronger, reduced or removed their limits.

She could help.

Charlotte stepped out of the vehicle. She took a breath and squared her shoulders, then walked up to Miss Militia.

The woman noticed her immediately, of course, but finished rattling off instructions to a PRT officer before addressing her. “Sorry for the delay, Bouquet. I’ll have someone ready to escort you shortly.”

“No, ma’am, that’s not what I was going to ask. I think I can help. I want to.”

Miss Militia shook her head. “No. That’s very brave, but this is the Siberian and Bonesaw. I won’t put you up against them.”

“I’ve been ambushed by the Nine three times in the past three days. Two of them are here, but there are five more lurking somewhere else. I doubt I’ll be any safer traveling alone through the city with a couple PRT escorts than I would be here with you and your team. Plus, I can make a difference.”

“What is your power?”

“I’m a Trump.” She didn’t want to make the comparison, but she forced herself to say it. “I’m like Othala for capes, I enhance other parahumans’ powers.”

Unexpectedly, Miss Militia took a step away and formed her power into a large rifle. “Like Ingenue.”

“Who?”

“Another power manipulator. She could improve powers, but she was also a Master. The capes she enhanced became devoted to her and went homicidally insane. She’s in the Birdcage.”

“Oh.” Charlotte shrank in on herself. “I didn’t know that.”

“Many power-granting Trumps have a Master component to their ability. Ingenue, Teacher, Bastard Son. Othala is more of the exception than the rule.”

“I don’t think mine does?” Even to her own ears Charlotte sounded uncertain. “Tattletale said I was more like Two from the Yangban.” Honestly, that wasn’t much of an improvement, but foreign-autocratic-military-figure was a less damaging comparison than infamous-Birdcaged-Master, right?

“How does your power work?” Miss Militia wasn’t pointing her gun at Charlotte, but she wasn’t pointing it away either.

“I can sense where capes are, and if I touch one then their power is stronger until I let go. I can turn my power off, but that’s hard.”

“Stronger how?”

“It’s been different for everyone so far. Skitter’s range got bigger, Tattletale figured things out she couldn’t before, Faultline, um.”

“Yes?”

Charlotte felt very small. Admitting this was probably a mistake. “Faultline bypassed her Manton limit. That’s how she accidentally took off Squealer’s leg.”

“I see.” Miss Militia thought for a moment. “It doesn’t last when you break contact?”

“No, only as long as we’re touching.” Charlotte smelled fennel approaching from above and behind her, and she turned in time to see Assault land silently from a bounding leap.

“Hmm. Another kind of dependency, then. And the Thinker sub makes a Master less likely.” Another flurry of gunshots echoed up from the hole into Coil’s base, and Miss Militia nodded to herself. She tapped her communicator. “Console, this is Miss Militia. Given the present threat of the Slaughterhouse Nine, I am making the field decision to voluntarily allow Bouquet to use her Trump power on me. Assault will monitor my behavior, and I will submit to Master screening when I return. Until and unless countermanded by Assault, I will retain command of this operation.”

Apparently receiving an affirmative response, Miss Militia held out her hand. Charlotte took it, and the scent of pumpkin pie spilled over between them, intensifying like the oven had just been opened to remove a fresh one. Miss Militia’s rifle dissolved into her iconic green energy, reforming in an instant into a sleek pistol, then into a long polearm. She twisted something on it and the head crackled with electricity, then sprouted two grappling hooks and shot out of the haft, trailing a thin chain. An instant later it had dissolved again and reshaped itself into a polearm with a slightly different shape. This one sprouted a gray haze around the blade.

“Holy shit!” Assault said. “That’s the one Armsmaster used against Leviathan.”

Once again Miss Militia’s power shifted, this time forming something closer to a cannon than a gun. It was made of a sky-blue metal, and yellow lightning sparked through clear glass tubes that traced down the barrel. The two-inch bore glowed white.

Miss Militia’s scarf did nothing to hide her smile. “Yes, Bouquet, I think you can make a difference.” She stepped away from Charlotte and the tinker cannon melted away into a disappointingly mundane taser, the pumpkin pie scent fading. “Butler, Itoga, Laramie! You’re still on escort duty for Bouquet, but you’re not taking her back to HQ. Instead, your job is to keep her safe beside me. Sergeants, we’re spreading out so keep your fire teams in contact.”

A tilt of her head invited Charlotte over, and this time instead of grasping her hand Charlotte reached out to touch the back of Miss Militia’s costume. The blue and yellow cannon reappeared in Miss Militia’s hands.

“No skin contact required?”

“No, it works through clothing too.”

“Convenient.” The cannon dissolved and reformed again, but this time it was a foot longer and sported two barrels. “I saw Hero use this one against Behemoth in New York. Let’s find out if it can do something to the bitch who killed him.”


	24. Topple 3.L

Luke sprinted down the tunnel, cursing with every footfall. “Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit.” The Siberian may only have been the fourth scariest thing they’d encountered on Bet, but when the top three spots were taken by the mind-breaking terror of the Simurgh, the incomparable horror of Noelle’s mutating body, and the sheer destructive power of Leviathan, fourth place was nothing to scoff at.

Worse than the fact that she was here was her horrid timing. Today’s disaster of a confrontation had been the final straw that convinced Luke to abandon Krouse to his own idiocy. But, Luke wasn’t going to be the next Cody. He wouldn’t betray the rest of the group and leave them in a worse position after he was gone. So he’d spent time persuading Jess and Oliver to come with him, to cut their losses and let Krouse pursue his lost cause alone. They’d all done their best for Noelle, but sometimes there weren’t happy endings. They should have learned that when Chris died back in Madison, or at the very least when Cody tried to screw them over in Boston.

Luke didn’t slow down to open the metal door at the top of the stairs. Instead he gave it a quick touch, using his power to shoot it into the far wall, ripping out of its hinges on its way to embedding in the concrete with a bang. It was faster, and it would leave an open escape route for them to come back up.

Even more than usual, today’s bad outcomes were obviously Krouse’s fault. Usually Luke had to point out one or two intermediate effects to explain why their fearless leader had fucked them over again, but today? It was as blatant as it got. When Trickster and Coil had been out of the picture, there was sanity on both sides. They were negotiating, compromising, and using actual diplomacy. Then Krouse unfroze and immediately screwed everything up. He made the heroes mad, he got their boss stabbed by that dumpy girl he’d stupidly tried to take hostage, and he forced them yet _again_ into a situation where they had to back down or start using lethal force. All in “defense” of a kidnapped, malnourished tween, not that Krouse would have cared what they were fighting about beyond “protect the deal for Noelle.” And all of that had distracted them long enough for Skitter and Grue to sneak in and capture their leverage in an uncontested base raid.

Luke had known for a long time that he would have been a better leader for their group, but this episode was proof positive that just about _anyone_ but Krouse would do a better job. It was enough to convince Jess, and they’d planned to leave that night. Oliver had been on board for a while now and was done packing practically as soon as Luke gave him the word.

So, _of course_ the Siberian and Bonesaw would attack them right now before they got the chance. That was exactly the kind of luck he kept running into here on Bet. Krouse’s fault again. He didn’t take a hint that maybe the infamous murderers who wanted to meet his mutant girlfriend would be persistent enough to try more than once. How hard would it have been to say, “Hey, Coil, got a truck? Let’s get Noelle out of the city away from the S-class threat.” Idiot!

Luke finally reached the bottom of the stairwell and paused before the door that would take him to the Travelers’ living quarters. He didn’t want to paste anyone on the other side, and he definitely didn’t want to rush out into the middle of a fight with Hack Job if the serial killer had teleported toward this part of the base. It was quiet enough beyond the door, so he pushed it open. Sounds of fighting echoed from elsewhere in the base, but it was hard to tell where or how far away the noise was since it was bouncing off the concrete walls until it seemed to be coming from multiple directions.

Sprinting again, Luke burst into Oliver’s. Empty. No people, no bags. He did an about face and raced two doors down to Jess’ room. He opened the door too forcefully and it rebounded painfully into his shoulder, but he ignored that. Inside, Oliver looked up from where he was lifting Jess out of her chair.

“Luke! What’s going on?” Jess sounded frantic despite the calm stillness she was presenting on her face.

“Not like that, man. You’ll never make it up all the stairs carrying her in your arms. Switch to piggyback.”

“Sure,” said Oliver. He repositioned, and Luke lifted Jess to help her put her arms over his shoulders.

“Luke?” she prodded.

“The Nine are here for Noelle again. It’s the Siberian and Bonesaw this time, plus Hatchet Face with a teleporting upgrade.”

“Oh, no! We have to help her.”

Luke grit his teeth and forced himself not to snap at her. “It’s too late. They’re already in the base, and the Siberian is unstoppable.” Luke grabbed the three bags that Oliver had packed, threading his left arm through the shoulder straps, then snatched all the blankets and pillows off the bed with his other hand. “Even if we could get to the vault, we can’t get her out.”

“Krouse could teleport her, maybe?”

Oliver answered as he carried her out the door. “Not if they have a teleporter of their own. There’s no straight shot topside, so he’d have to go in stages, with something big enough to swap her with at each step. Even without enemy capes to fight through that would be hard to do at speed.”

“I hate this,” said Jess. “Leaving her to maybe get fixed by Coil is one thing, but leaving her to be killed or worse by the Nine isn’t us.”

“No choice,” said Luke. “This isn’t a fight we can win, so we’re saving who we can.” He ran past them to the stairs. Wrapping each bag in pillows and blankets, he aimed carefully and used his power to launch them up the empty space in the center of the stairwell. The first one wasn’t cushioned well enough against the impact and burst open, showering the upper flights with whatever possessions had been inside. The next hit the ceiling at a better angle and simply bounced onto the top landing. The final bag also split, but not as violently as the first and only lost part of its contents. Didn’t matter, those were mostly keepsakes that Oliver had picked up. Nearly everything they would need in terms of money and supplies was stashed in his territory already. Less to carry this way, which was better.

“Wait,” said jess as Oliver started up the steps. “What about Mars?”

With a Herculean effort Luke kept himself from cursing aloud. He knew a lost cause when he saw one. There was no way Jess would agree to come if he didn’t at least make a token effort to bring Marissa with them. It would be faster to just do it now rather than arguing with her about it. “I’ll go get her now. Where is she?”

“She was trying to get Krouse to calm down. Coil refused to talk to him until he’d gotten his arm treated.”

“Okay. I’ll get her and meet you at the top. Don’t wait for us, though. If we don’t catch up then head for my apartment in my territory. I’ve got some money and supplies stockpiled for us to leave town. If you don’t see us in 24 hours, take what you need and just go. We’ll get in touch through our emails when we can.”

“Got it,” said Oliver.

Luke turned and ran for the catwalks. Trickster liked looking down on everyone from there, so it was where Mars was most likely to be. It figured Mars would be near Krouse, which meant close to Noelle and in the target zone for the Nine.

For a brief moment Luke considered just making a run for it and lying when Jess asked about it. That wouldn’t hold up, though, and something like that would tear apart the last bonds that held them together. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a loss, but it was all they had left, especially now that they were cutting ties with Krouse. Besides, Luke kind of wanted to spit in Krouse’s face with the fact he’d stolen the rest of the Travelers away from his inept leadership.

Odds were Hack Job would already be at the vault, but the Siberian had been walking slowly and might have gotten distracted slaughtering any mercenaries that got in her way. If he was fast enough and maybe a little bit lucky, he could grab Mars and get out without seeing the Siberian or Bonesaw at all.

Well, shit. If luck was involved at all then there was no way it could turn out that neatly. Krouse was cursed, after all. Maybe when he’d gotten away from Krouse and Noelle he’d escape the bad luck, too. Or maybe all of Bet was cursed. It was hard to tell.

He reached the catwalk and got his first look down into the open area that connected all the other areas of the base. The first thing he noticed was that the Siberian and Bonesaw were nowhere in sight. He’d beaten them here after all. Right now it was just thirty or forty mercenaries trying to take down Hack Job.

That should have been a lost cause. However skilled they were, any number of normals were still at a disadvantage against a teleporting Brute. However, the number of visible casualties was markedly lower than Luke would have expected. Losses were probably much higher in the hallways leading here, but in this room Krouse and Mars had managed to stymie most of Hack Job’s attacks.

Protected by one of Mars’ suns, Krouse perched on the catwalk swapping people and objects with abandon, to the point that Luke was surprised the mercs had managed to avoid shooting each other in the confusion. Hack Job appeared in the middle of a group of five, but he was instantly swapped with the man in front of his axe. The swing missed, and he wasn’t able to reposition himself for another attack before he dissolved into ash. Hack Job’s clones only lasted about two seconds, compared to the six to ten that Oni Lee’s would stick around, so holding them off was just as valid a tactic as trying to wound or kill them.

Unfortunately, Hack Job didn’t seem to have any appreciable delay between his teleports, and at any given moment Luke could see half a dozen of his clones fighting around the room. New ones popped up as older ones dissipated. The only way to injure him would be to get a lucky hit in on the original. That must have already happened at some point because all of the versions Luke saw had a wicked gouge of flesh missing from their abdomens.

One mercenary was too slow to avoid a swinging axe and lost a leg at the knee. The man beside him was distracted by that and didn’t notice another Hack Job appear from behind. Just before he would have lost his head, Trickster swapped him with a different Hack Job and the two clones killed each other.

Luke fished out a handful of ball bearings and started launching them at whichever Hack Job seemed most recent, at the same time running across the catwalk toward Mars. A couple of his shots dusted clones. One over-penetrated and hit a merc in the shin, sending him down with a cry.

A Hack Job appeared near Krouse, but Mars already had her sun blocking the approach and he couldn’t get through.

Even though his back was to Luke, Hack Job somehow teleported almost close enough to touch. _Oh, shit,_ Luke realized, _his line of sight uses both sets of eyes._ He managed to get a single shot off before he was within arm’s reach and his power deserted him. The ball bearing punched a hole right through where Hack Job’s heart should have been and the Brute stumbled with a spurt of blood. Luke’s internal cheer at seeing that the original hit rather than a clone cut off when Hack Job ignored the wound and almost instantly recovered his balance, reaching to grab Luke’s neck. Whether because of his own resilience or because of whatever Bonesaw had done to him, it clearly wasn’t a mortal injury; it barely even slowed him down.

Before that massive hand could grasp his neck, Luke found himself on the lower level with frantically regrouping mercenaries. A choked off scream from above suggested that one of them had taken Luke’s place. He shuddered, both at the close call and at Trickster’s callousness. _Damnit Krouse, that’s not how you keep allies from shooting you in the back!_

Hack Job was focusing on Trickster and Sundancer now, eight or ten of him appearing on and above the catwalk. One got close enough to touch Trickster, only to be immediately torched by the miniature sun. Still, that brief inhibition of Trickster’s power allowed other clones to close in on Sundancer from the opposite side. She realized the danger and twisted away, but a punch glanced her ribs as the sun sputtered out. Before they could bring their axes down on her, Luke shot the two closest clones through the head with ball bearings, and they collapsed into ash. At that point Trickster managed to swap Mars with some concrete rubble on the lower floor, doing the same for himself a moment later.

This was just too much to handle. They could deal with a teleporter or a Brute or a power suppressor, and probably any two in combination, but all three together was too difficult. Fortunately, there was one obvious weakness to a line of sight teleporter. Take away their sight, and that aspect of their power was negated.

Luke snatched a pouch of sand from his pocket and broke it open, taking half in each hand. This wasn’t something he ever used against non-Brutes, but wasn’t a time to hold back from lethal attacks. 

Running to the spot where Mars was lying, he set his power to what he called “hair trigger mode,” scanning side to side for new targets. As soon as a figure appeared in front of him he fired, ten thousand grains of sand accelerating to lethal speed in an instant. The first Hack Job dusted immediately, but the one that appeared a half second later stutter stepped, his face sand blasted away. Some parts were fleshy and raw, others were stripped deep enough to expose the skull. Most important, though, was that the eyes no longer functioned. Hack Job was no longer a teleporter.

The abomination immediately proved Luke wrong by spawning another clone before dissolving into ash. It took Luke a moment to remember what he’d missed. Oni Lee’s eyes on the back hadn’t been destroyed.

Still, without forward facing eyes Hack Job was significantly hampered. He could only teleport backwards now, and he couldn’t see what he was doing with his hands or where he was swinging his axe.

Unfortunately, Hack Job responded to this by spinning in circles with his axe extended, teleporting willy nilly without regard for where he’d end up. The room became a veritable blender of axe blades. Trickster did some good by maneuvering the clones into killing each other, but there were still more injuries and deaths in those fifteen seconds than there had been since Luke first arrived in the chamber.

Then a lucky shot landed a purple laser across Oni Lee’s grafted face, charring the original Hack Job’s second set of eyes. Soon, there was only one copy, and a hail of bullets and lasers dropped it to the ground.

Luke finally reached Marissa’s side and scooped her up as gently as he could. She yelled in pain as her ribs shifted.

“You’ll be okay,” he said. “I’ll get you out of here.”

That wouldn’t be easy from the lower level, though. It would be a lot faster if he could get up to the catwalk again, but carrying Mars wouldn’t let him use the ladders.

“Trickster! Can you get us up to the catwalk?”

Krouse didn’t answer, but there was a lot of shouting from the mercenaries so maybe he didn’t hear? Luke looked until he found Krouse, facing off to one side. He shouted again. “Trickster!” No response. Then he noticed that many of the mercenaries were staring the same way Krouse was. He glanced to the side.

Framed in one doorway stood the black and white figure of the Siberian. On one side she was holding hands with the creepiest little girl to ever live, blonde ringlets framing a sadistic grin. The other hand was dragging Coil’s headless corpse by one foot. As they watched, the Siberian lifted it to her mouth and bit off several toes. She made a considering face at the taste before tossing the body behind her into the hall.

“What did you do to Hack Job?” Bonesaw pouted. “It was really hard to make him, with that power suppression field complicating everything. I had to operate through my bots, and keeping him from turning off the teleporting power was super tricky.”

Everyone took a step back from the pair.

“Oh, well, at least he’s not completely dead yet,” Bonesaw continued, “so that means he’s fixable. I bet he’d be even better if he could see in _all_ directions! Sibby, remind me to collect extra eyes before we leave.”

The Siberian nodded, and gestured around the room.

“No, not yet. It’s better to use them fresh. Plus, I don’t want to get distracted. It’s time to meet the guest of honor!”

The Siberian jumped then, crossing the entire length of the room in a single leap that had a much flatter trajectory than normal physics would have allowed. She came to an abrupt stop in front of the vault door, still dented and gouged from Crawler’s attack. With one clawed foot she swiped through the rail mechanism at the bottom then jammed her arm all the way through. Jumping almost straight up, she tore through fifteen feet of the door, dragging Bonesaw along as she went. As they descended, her arm ripped through it again a couple feet to the side, creating a sizable gap.

As soon as the first breach opened, sounds started to come through the door. Noelle sounded panicked.

“Hello? Krouse? What’s going on? I heard fighting.” By the time the Siberian touched the ground again, she’d realized that something was seriously wrong. “No! Don’t let me out. I’m so hungry, and I don’t know if I can stop myself. What are you doing? Please stop!”

Bonesaw stepped into the opening, still holding the Siberian’s hand.

“Get away from her!” shouted Krouse. He gestured wildly, obviously trying to teleport them away from the vault, but nothing happened. Luke guessed that the Siberian was immune to Trickster’s power, just like she was to everything else.

“You are so beautiful!” squealed Bonesaw. “If I’d seen pictures I might have picked you myself. Well, no, not when you share a city with the best biotinker in the world. But Crawler picked you, so I get to try to recruit you, too! I don’t even have to choose between you, because Shatterbird’s spot is open now. This is going to be amazing!”

Th situation was rapidly devolving into the worst case scenario. Luke _needed_ to leave. Most of the mercenaries had come to the same conclusion and were already fleeing out the nearest exit, and Luke started to join them. Moving jostled Marissa, though, and she cried out.

“Mars? Are you okay?” Noelle called. “Who’s hurting you?”

Two heavy tentacles slammed into Bonesaw. The first shuddered to a complete stop, meeting an immovable object. The second shredded into pieces, splattering gore out into the room. Luke slipped on some of it, crashing onto his back. Mars collapsed on top of him, screaming again in her pain.

“Mars!” A two toned roar and bray sounded, some of Noelle’s other mouths shouting along with her.

Bonesaw and the Siberian hopped backwards, and the vault door shook as something massive crashed against it once, twice. On the third time a wrenching screech of twisting metal accompanied the front half of Noelle’s body forcing its way through the gap the Siberian had opened.

“It’s the Slaughterhouse Nine,” yelled Krouse. “They killed Coil and injured Sundancer.”

 _No, Krouse, you idiot! Sending Noelle on a rampage is_ not _going to improve this situation._ Luke shifted out from under Marissa and looked up in time to see Noelle push herself the rest of the way out of the vault. Oh, hell.

She leapt at the Siberian first. It was like an old cartoon when a character crashes through a wall, leaving a person-shaped hole behind. In this case, it was a Siberian shaped rent torn into the lion-like face at the front of Noelle’s lower body. A cacophony of screams announced her pain, but already the hole was filling in again, the damage healing.

“Awesome! Crawler is going to love you,” giggled Bonesaw as she and the Siberian stepped clear.

Denied their first target, Noelle’s mouths searched for other prey. Two tentacles snatched up mercenaries who were still too close. At the same time, one toothy maw descend on Hack Job’s prone form. Oh, no. Please, no warped clones of someone already homicidally dangerous. Noelle shuddered, and her wound visibly stopped sealing itself. The mouth crunched, and her healing resumed.

Noelle’s mouths vomited up four figures. Two were clothed in body armor, two were deformed and naked. Luke killed those ones immediately with ball bearings. Hack Job’s body did not reappear, either the original or a twisted duplicate. Relieved that Hack Job’s power suppression had prevented Noelle from making duplicates, Luke scooped up Marissa again. Her whimper of pain drew Noelle’s attention his way, and he froze.

“Mars, you’re hurt!”

“I can fix her up,” Bonesaw volunteered cheerfully. “Easy-peasy!”

Noelle looked at Bonesaw in panic. “No! Stay away from my friends!” She lurched forward to place herself in Bonesaw’s way. This put her only a few feet away from Luke. Her human head was looking the other direction, focused on the Nine, but a set of eyes in a wolf-like face on her hind quarters locked onto Luke and Marissa. A sticky tongue launched out of that mouth and Luke kicked a small chunk of concrete, using his power to send it speeding out to impact the tongue before it could touch them.

He backed away quickly. Not quickly enough, though, since a longer tentacle grasped after him. He couldn’t let it grab him, but there wasn’t anything to use his power on!

Luke heaved Marissa into the tentacle’s path, using the momentum to push himself backward into a sprint. He ignored the sounds behind him and simply ran. Jess would understand that he’d done his best, he’d tried to bring Marissa with him, but it wasn’t possible. Once again, everything was Krouse’s fault. If Krouse hadn’t dragged them around with Noelle they wouldn’t have been targeted by the Nine. If Krouse hadn’t been in a foul mood after his screwup, Marissa wouldn’t have been trying to talk sense into him when they attacked. And if Krouse hadn’t told Noelle about Marissa’s injury, her out-of-control mutant half wouldn’t have snatched her up. It was beyond time they all got away from the poison Krouse brought to their team.

Up ahead of him, three mercenaries were boarding the freight elevator. Luke jumped in just as one of them hit the override so that they could ascend without closing the doors. Gunfire and shouts and angry roars echoed after them, and Luke thanked his lucky stars that he was finally free of whatever curse the Simurgh had placed on Krouse and Noelle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to Juff for betaing this chapter. Among other things, the Travelers would have been a lot further from their canon characterization without his input.


	25. Topple 3.6

Miss Militia quickly led Charlotte to the roof level of a wide parking deck across the street from the construction site, where the veteran heroine set up to provide overwatch. It didn’t take long to do, since her power generated the weapons she wanted exactly where she needed them.

The Undersiders had left, unable to dissuade Bitch from looking for her dogs. After a brief discussion they had agreed that it was better to spring whatever trap awaited them while Bonesaw and the Siberian were occupied in Coil’s base, and Bitch had grudgingly agreed to wait just long enough to call for backup from the villain coalition.

Assault and the PRT officers who hadn’t been assigned as Charlotte’s personal escort were spread out around a wide area, mostly at ground level where they were within easy reach of vehicles for evacuation. In fact, several civilian vehicles (two pickups and a delivery truck) had been commandeered once they were determined to be functional. Extra options to retreat from the Siberian were paramount ... which made Charlotte’s elevated position on an exposed roof with no easy exits more than slightly concerning.

Charlotte distracted herself from that thought by watching Miss Militia cycle through an unbelievable variety of tinker weapons that she had apparently seen over the course of her career. Eventually Charlotte recognized a few repeated examples and, as they recurred more often, realized that the woman was narrowing down her options.

For a nerve-wracking amount of time hardly anything happened at all. Vague sounds of violence occasionally drifted out of the underground base, but nothing clear enough to indicate what was happening down below. At one point Charlotte thought she heard a faint bestial roar, but she might have imagined it.

When shouts from the perimeter heralded a new arrival, the figure that appeared wasn’t Bonesaw or the Siberian. Charlotte didn’t know _what_ it was, beyond fast, large, and multilimbed. The thing was about fifteen feet tall and had five thick white legs that rotated on strange joints as it rushed out from behind the unfinished building. The upper body was bulbous and pale blue, dotted with a ring of emerald, scallop-like eyes. Its three long arms bore blunt fingers on the ends but were lined with a scythe-like blade from elbow to wrist. A more-or-less human face poked up from the top on a flexible neck.

“Don’t shoot!” it called, waving its three arms in the air in a way that was not actually very reassuring given the four-foot blades attached to them. “I’m here to help.”

“Genesis? Is that you?” asked Assault. He projected his voice to be heard across the whole lot.

“Yes, it’s me. I need you to help save my teammates.”

Charlotte boggled a bit. The purple toad had been an entirely different shape and size than this bizarre creature. She hadn’t thought shapeshifters were so versatile. Or so gross.

“I’m sorry, Genesis. We can’t go in after them. An enclosed area like that would be the worst possible place to engage the Siberian or Bonesaw alone, much less both together.”

“I know that. Please. You don’t have to go in, but they let Noelle out. You need to help me get her under control.”

Assault looked back at Miss Militia, who waved Genesis closer. She also set her radio to broadcast so all the nearby PRT agents could listen in to the conversation.

“Who is Noelle?”

“Our teammate. Not one you’ve seen. Her power is out of control and hurts her, sometimes sends her into rage states. They’re really bad. I’m sure that the Nine attacking the base and releasing her like this will trigger one. Please. We _have_ to calm her down. She has Sundancer, and that’s … bad. That’s going to make this even harder.”

“You know what’s happening down there?”

“Some. Ballistic just escaped, and he told me what he saw. He said Hatchet Face—no, he called him Hack Job or something—that guy and Coil are both dead. Noelle is loose and chasing the Siberian. I came to you to get help saving Sundancer and stopping Noelle from going on a rampage.”

A loud rumble from below caused the ground to visibly shudder. Charlotte heard a faint roar.

“It may be too late for that,” said Miss Militia. “What’s her power? How do we calm her down?”

“In the past she’s gone berserk when she’s hungry, so feeding her was what helped most. Her body needs to eat a lot of meat. Other than that, talking to her – reasoning with her helps her regain control. That’s what I’m going to try. But the important thing is don’t touch her! Her power won’t affect me, so let me be the one to get close.”

“What’s her power?” Miss Militia repeated, more pointedly this time.

A crash from the destroyed entrance drew Charlotte’s eyes. A metal grate had been pushed over and half a dozen beleaguered mercenaries were clambering over it to get out of the base as quickly as they could. Two were visibly injured to the point that they had to be helped across.

Genesis had also spun around at the sound. Seeing that it wasn’t the Nine or her teammate emerging yet, she focused back on the conversation. “She, uh, she makes duplicates of people she touches. Aggressive ones, physically warped. They don’t look fully human.”

“She controls them?”

“No. They’re independent. Some have acted loyal to her, but we’ve been careful about touching her, and it’s only happened five times so far, so I don’t really know.”

“Wait,” said Charlotte, realizing an important question. “What happens if she copies a cape?”

“The copy has powers too. Not exactly the same power, but something related.”

“Oh, shit.” Assault’s curse was loudest, but Charlotte heard similar from two of her bodyguard PRT agents. She was pretty sure _everyone_ was thinking it.

“And she’s down there with the Siberian.” Miss Militia sounded extremely grave. Honestly, the situation warranted it.

“Ballistic didn’t stick around for long, but he said it looked like the Siberian’s immunity to powers extended to Noelle. There weren’t any Bonesaw or Siberian copies even though he saw her touch them both.”

“Thank God.” Charlotte shared a sigh of relief with everyone else.

Four more mercenaries exited the base at a run. As they did so, the rumbling became more audible.

“Let’s hope that remains true,” Miss Militia agreed. “Is the duplicate thing what you meant when you said she has Sundancer?”

“Yes.”

Miss Militia raised her radio. “I think all of you heard that. We have an additional hostile parahuman, Striker-Trump, likely not in control of herself. Cape minions with unknown powers are expected. Keep your distance and do _not_ let her touch you. Try to support Genesis, who will talk her down. Preference for containment, but Bonesaw and the Siberian remain our priority targets and lethal measures are authorized for the duration.”

 _< Copy that,>_ came multiple acknowledgements.

The PRT teams on the ground redistributed themselves slightly, and Agent Itoga, one of Charlotte’s escorts, was relaying the whole conversation to central dispatch to make sure that the rest of the PRT was briefed.

Miss Militia resumed her overwatch position, sighting the blue and yellow tinker cannon on the entrance of the base. “Anything else we should know, Genesis?”

Seeing a fifteen-foot-tall monstrosity shuffling its five feet nervously was an intensely bizarre experience. It also gave Charlotte a very bad feeling about whatever she was going to say.

“Yeah,” said Genesis, “Noelle’s body has… changed. She’s _really_ strong.”

“A Brute, too?” asked Assault. “Any other good news?”

“Um, actually…”

Whatever Genesis was going to say was cut off by the sudden reappearance of the Siberian. Instead of emerging from the entrance, though, she clawed her way up through the cement foundation of the building several dozen yards away. She didn’t even appear no notice that she was halfway inside a wall—the concrete and steel and whatever else simply tore to pieces under her fingers and she stepped free, pulling Bonesaw after her.

Miss Militia fired almost immediately, a crackling yellow orb with a white center streaking forward to impact the Siberian’s back.

There was no effect. The orb didn’t detonate or splash or arc to the ground, it simply disappeared. Charlotte wasn’t even sure the Siberian _noticed_.

With a swirl of pumpkin pie, Miss Militia reformed her weapon into a new shape and fired a huge red beam. Her target noticed this time, because it entirely bathed both the Siberian and Bonesaw, disintegrating the matter around them in weaving tendrils of black ash. Bonesaw stared at the widening hole under her feet, and the Siberian casually glanced over her shoulder at Miss Militia. The distance and the disintegration beam made it hard to tell, but Charlotte swore that the Siberian _winked_ at them.

Miss Militia tried one more weapon, which proved equally ineffective, before the Siberian leapt away at incredible speed, pulling Bonesaw halfway across the construction site. Miss Militia was tracking them with her current orange rifle, but Charlotte’s eyes were riveted to the gaping hole in the ground where the two had been standing. Something shifted in the shadows, and then a long brown limb speared out into the fading sunlight.

The limb was thick and bumpy, and more than anything it reminded Charlotte of a starfish leg, only one that was fast and flexible. Oh, and at least ten feet long! It wrapped around a chunk of wall and yanked back, collapsing more of the building into rubble that fell and buried the arm or tentacle or whatever it was.

There was a beat of stillness, and then something burst out of the ground, scattering debris in all directions. The ground under it shifted and sank while rumbles continued underground.

Charlotte’s first panicked thought was that Crawler had joined the other members of the Nine in their attack. The disgusting mishmash of animal parts in front of her bore enough resemblance to the pictures that the Protectorate had shown at the meeting on Crater Lake that it was an automatic association. The thing was larger than a rhinoceros, maybe the size of an Asian elephant. It had six powerful legs that Charlotte could see supporting its twisted body, each a different shape. There were a few smaller legs as well, tipped with hooves or claws. Its disparate parts were each brown or green or gray, but where the mismatched body parts met one another the flesh was angry red and swollen into tumorous growths.

Most disturbing was that Charlotte could see two and a half faces on the front. One head looked ferocious, like a furless lion. Beside it was what you might get if cows were carnivorous. A bit further to the other side was a bulge of wrinkled flesh that pressed outwards and had a lizard’s maw but was not a head so much as half of a face spilling out of the thing’s shoulder. All three had mouths large enough they could practically swallow a person whole.

“Dear God, what is that?” Charlotte didn’t know she’d spoken until she realized that the question had been asked in her own voice.

Genesis ran towards it, yelling “Noelle!” which answered basically none of the questions that Charlotte really wanted to know.

Noelle responded, turning to look at Genesis, which was when Charlotte realized that a woman was riding on the thing’s back. That made it much easier to handle. It was like Bitch’s dogs, only a hundred times more disturbing and ugly and gross. Charlotte stilled her stomach and managed not to vomit at the abomination’s appearance. Noelle’s power simply gave her a minion that she rode into battle.

That comforting lie died as the thing took a step forward. Its movements revealed very clearly that the woman was only an upper body, and that she was _growing_ out of the top of the monstrosity, angry red flesh fusing with human skin just above where her navel would have been. She was wearing a dirty T-shirt that would have been long enough to cover that transition, but it was ripped down one side and blowing open enough to expose where the human body became something very other.

“Genesis!”

Out of Noelle’s left flank was growing what appeared to be a thumb and two fingers from a human hand, except sized up to the point that the thumb was as big around as Charlotte had been before her diet. On the other side … well. The starfish tentacle that had made its appearance first swung through the air and latched onto an abandoned excavator, giving Noelle the necessary leverage to pull herself away from the crumbling ground. A writhing mass of other tentacles surrounded its base on her right hindquarters, and many of those quested around her body, feeling at her surroundings. A few coiled more tightly on her back, and one reached around the humanoid torso, tugging at the T shirt and almost caressing the woman’s arm. She didn’t seem to notice.

Charlotte averted her gaze quickly, trying desperately to keep her lunch down. The sight she found to distract herself wasn’t much better. In the few seconds Charlotte had spent trying to make sense of Noelle’s monstrous body, the Siberian had leapt after a fleeing mercenary and speared her arm through his back. His body hung from one side like a gigged frog while Bonesaw gripped the Siberian’s other hand, and they were chasing down a PRT fireteam.

Miss Militia had somehow kept her aim on the Siberian throughout, trying gun after gun. As Charlotte watched, a blue flash glassed the ground under the Siberian’s feet and vaporized the mercenary’s corpse but didn’t do anything to the Siberian herself.

The striped woman lunged and caught a PRT officer by the neck. Spinning, she flung him one handed in a move that should have snapped his neck but somehow didn’t, judging by the yell that was only partly muffled by his full faceplate. His flight ended with a slap, embedded back-first several inches into Noelle’s side, only a few inches from the lizard half-face. He screamed as the lizard’s eye rolled to regard him. Then, his scream intensified. The wound from his impact was regenerating, but rather than expelling him, flesh was growing around his limbs, creeping over his chest and across his face. Instead of freeing him, his struggles seemed to sink him deeper into the brown and red flesh as though it were quicksand. In moments he was gone, pulled inside of the chimeric horror.

There was a brief silence, broken only by another discharge of Miss Militia’s weapon.

Then Noelle vomited. Not from her human head, but from the lizard’s and lion’s mouths in a volume that had to have been the entire contents of however many stomachs were crammed inside her fused body. Charlotte had thought before that the mouths could swallow a person whole. She now got to see the truth of that in horrifying reverse as two bodies were expelled. The lizard’s mouth was almost too narrow, and the PRT officer’s body armor snagged briefly.

This was the point where Charlotte lost control and her churning stomach emptied violently over the side of the parking deck. In doing so, she discovered an unexpected benefit of being unable to taste or smell. It was still gross and burning and unpleasant, but not nearly so bad as she remembered without smelling of vomit. The additional downside of vomiting in this situation was that she lost contact with Miss Militia, the pumpkin pie scent diminishing as the heroine found herself firing an assault rifle instead of the tinker-tech wonder she’d been holding.

“Sorry,” mumbled Charlotte. She pressed her foot against Miss Militia’s boots while wiping her mouth and pulling the (fortunately still clean) scarf back up over her face.

Looking back at Noelle, Charlotte saw a second forceful discharge of vomit had pushed out the stuck PRT officer who now lay weakly on the ground gasping for breath. Beside him, a naked man leapt to his feet. Except, this man had no forearms, and his skin looked like runny clay had set badly. He immediately kicked the PRT officer in the knees before repositioning for a strike at his head. Then Genesis was there, slicing through the homicidal clone with one of her wrist blades and using another hand to help the officer to his feet.

“Noelle!” she said. “We need to get you someplace safe. Follow me and I’ll take you somewhere you won’t touch anyone.”

“They killed Coil!” screamed Noelle.

Instead of listening to her, though, Charlotte was distracted by another plume of vomit shooting out the opposite direction. At first, she thought it might have been diarrhea of some sort, but then she saw the wolf’s head that grew there, partially obscured by the giant fingers. From the new puddle of juices another naked figure stood, this one a teenage girl whose left elbow and knee didn’t bend, seemingly fused straight. Three softball-size blazes of light sprang into being around her, all of which rocketed off in the direction of the Siberian.

Two smashed into the Siberian’s face, one right after the other. Both were promptly extinguished, disappearing as though they had never existed. The third impacted against her chest, but rather than being annihilated like the others, it found an impenetrable barrier and bounced off. The Siberian snatched it out of the air with her free hand and examined it closely. Then she bit it, swallowing a chunk of it as though it were a large fruit and not a miniature sun.

The mutant Sundancer gestured, and the broken vestige of a sun dissipated into nothing. Another gesture, and the three tiny suns reappeared, racing away once again to attack. This time they scored and melted the ground around the Siberian, leaving streaks of fire.

The Siberian negligently stepped through the flames, indifferent.

Meanwhile, Genesis and Noelle were still arguing with each other.

“… not the only one who could fix you. We’ll get help somewhere else!”

“That’s not the point. Coil is gone. His precog is gone. Without their powers we are _exposed_ to—”

Genesis cut her off. “Not here, Noelle. We’ll talk about that later. It’s _fine_. We’ll find someone else.”

“It’s _not_ fine!” Noelle shrieked. “We’re _exposed_ now. Don’t you remember why we came here? It wasn’t just the pipe dream of fixing my horrid body! Coil promised precog interference to shield us from the Simurgh! But he’s dead and the precog’s gone, and _she_ can see us now!”

The tension skyrocketed. Talking about the Simurgh was taboo for a reason. People quarantined their thoughts of her out of self-preservation, walling off their terror where it couldn’t destroy the rest of their fragile worlds. Sphere was one example of why—a hero turned into a puppet of destruction. Charlotte had a sense of dread that the Travelers might be another example. Looking at the horror that Noelle had become, it wasn’t hard to believe.

“Really?” piped up Bonesaw. “Oh, poop. I should have had Sibby save his head so I could study it.”

Miss Militia fired again, and this time there was an effect. A mostly opaque ball of eggshell white phased into being around Bonesaw and the Siberian, freezing them into near motionlessness. Finally, a Tinker effect that she wasn’t immune to!

At least, not totally immune. After about two seconds, the stasis field flickered and tore. The Siberian stepped free, looking up at Miss Militia for the first time. Miss Militia fired again, and the Siberian dodged, but the heroine had been ready for that and caught her with bracketing shots. They were trapped for a couple seconds. Miss Militia watched carefully and timed a shot to trap the Siberian again as soon as the field failed.

Seeing this, Noelle charged towards the new stasis field, vomiting up another clone as she went. Miss Militia snapped off an additional shot and caught Noelle in a stasis field of her own. The Sundancer clone redirected her suns toward Miss Militia and was likewise trapped.

“Genesis. Explain!” she barked.

“She says crazy things when she’s like this.”

“Not good enough,” said Miss Militia, shooting the Siberian again every few seconds. The striped woman was moving in stutters between each shot, but for the moment she and Bonesaw were contained.

“Shouldn’t we focus on the Nine?”

“Genesis, the core function of the Protectorate is to keep humanity safe. We police villains for that purpose, but we fight a war against Endbringers. I have fought the Simurgh six times, and it is always horrific. Suspected Simurgh bombs are quarantined or killed, and I have both given and carried out those orders.”

“But the Truce—”

“—is for the purpose of combating an S-class threat. It is void if we have to combat a worse one. And the Simurgh is undoubtedly worse.”

“What about Jack causing the literal end of the world?”

“I dunno,” said Assault. He had approached Genesis. “Sounds like something Ziz might try to arrange if she had pawns in Brockton Bay to make it happen.”

“I strongly suggest you answer us honestly and submit to quarantine if we deem it necessary,” said Miss Militia. “I am fully prepared to execute a preemptive kill order in this case.”

Genesis said something in response, but Charlotte couldn’t hear it because the stasis field around Noelle failed and she gave a multi-voiced roar of anger. Miss Militia swung her weapon toward the sound, then suddenly tackled Charlotte to the ground, dropping both of them beneath the three flying suns that raced overhead and swung around for another pass at trying to incinerate them. Agent Laramie was several paces away along the roof. Instead of ducking, he brought his rifle up and fired four shots in a row. The suns winked out.

Charlotte felt breathless, and it wasn’t from being knocked against the concrete deck. Chicken coop and persimmon scents were approaching. Fast.

“Siberian,” she gasped.

Miss Militia responded instantly, reforming the weapon and firing behind herself without looking. The scents froze in place. Getting to her feet again, Charlotte saw a stasis bubble around two silhouettes just cresting the wall of the parking deck. Miss Militia shot them again just as they unfroze, and in that brief moment they traveled several feet closer.

Hand still on Miss Militia’s back, Charlotte retreated across the roof surrounded by her three escort officers. Sounds of fighting and chaos from below made their way over the lip of the roof, but Charlotte was wholly focused on the stop-motion approach of the two Slaughterhouse Nine members.

Halfway across the roof, Miss Militia changed strategies. Instead of instantly firing the stasis field each time, she preceded it with an experimental shot from another tinker weapon. Blue beam. Eggshell field. Purple sparks. Eggshell field. Black lightning. Eggshell field. On the eighth try the pattern changed. The splash of indigo light did nothing to the Siberian, but Bonesaw screamed. When the following stasis field broke, the screaming continued, especially when Miss Militia repeated the same attack.

“Ow! Aaaa! How are you doing that? I turned off all of my pain sensation, but that’s still getting through somehow. OW!”

The Siberian looked at Bonesaw with something approaching motherly concern, before snapping her gaze up to Miss Militia. There was murder in that expression, and the stasis field that immediately froze her did nothing to quiet the panic Charlotte felt. On first seeing the Siberian she had hoped to never see the woman upset or interested in anything. Now she was both. And Charlotte was right in her way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I reread all of the canon descriptions of Noelle to try to make her appearance consistent. I’ll just say that she’s a regular horror show that Giger would have been proud of. That bit about Coil and Dinah shielding the Travelers from the Simurgh comes from the end of the Migration arc, just when they are deciding to go to Brockton Bay. It doesn’t get much mention in fanfic, but it is presented as the one piece of hope that convinced each of the Travelers (minus Perdition—sorry, Cody) to try one more time and give Brockton a real effort even if Coil was just stringing them along with empty promises about fixing Noelle or returning them to Aleph.
> 
> Yes, it’s a little much to have Noelle just say that in front of everyone here, but she’s not the most stable person right now, and really isn’t thinking straight. Note that it’s been over a year at this point that she’s been forcefully isolated from anyone not on the team, and hardly any of them except Krouse have spent time with her for over six months. She may not be in practice with social considerations.


	26. Topple 3.7

Agent Laramie led the retreat across the roof, while Butler and Itoga took the flanks. Charlotte stayed close to Miss Militia so that she could renew the stasis field and keep the Siberian from killing them all. She also fired the pain beam weapon each time. Charlotte didn’t know if it was a tactical decision to make the two members of the Nine angrier and more prone to mistakes, or if it was simply a chance to make Bonesaw taste the pain she had inflicted on so many, but either way she approved. A glance at Miss Militia’s face gave Charlotte the impression that the woman was taking a certain amount of satisfaction, if not outright enjoyment, at the chance to stymie her enemies with superior firepower.

It wasn’t long before they reached the edge of the roof. Charlotte hadn’t noticed earlier, but one of her escorts had prepared two fast-rappel lines before the fight had broken out. She silently thanked God that they wouldn’t have to do something impossible like run down flights of stairs to get away or retreat slowly through multiple winding levels of the parking deck. She stepped up behind Laramie, who was double checking the anchors.

A hint of persimmon warned her, and without stopping to think she yanked on Laramie’s collar, pulling him back from the edge. He choked and toppled from his crouch, and the two needle-sharp legs that the ambushing spider bot jabbed over the lip of the wall failed to pierce his arm and neck. Butler was vigilant, and before the thing could attack again he had shot several holes through its chrome body. Red mush and a pale green liquid seeped out of the ruined bot.

“Thank you, Bouquet,” said Laramie, getting to his feet. He cautiously peered over the side. “Clear. Stay sharp.”

Itoga called a warning over the radio. Hopefully no PRT agents would be caught unaware by other spider bots.

Butler and Itoga descended first, then Laramie prepared the rope for himself and had Charlotte climb onto his back. As soon as Miss Militia had fired her stasis rifle he leapt off, using his gloves and boots to slow their fall. In seconds they were on solid ground again. Miss Militia was beside them, having descended the other rope at the same time. While Charlotte found her feet, Miss Militia leaned against her enough activate her power, and waited for the Siberian to appear.

And waited.

After five tense seconds, Miss Militia dismissed her weapon and shouted “Move out!”

Charlotte and her escort sprinted after the heroine, making distance from the parking deck before heading down the street and curving back around the corner toward the construction site. A flash of black and white in the corner of her vision had Charlotte flinching away, but it was just a checkered banner in the window of a fast food restaurant.

Miss Militia burst back onto the dirt lot, weapon leading. Neither of the Nine were in sight. Charlotte scanned the area, looking for any sign of them. A few PRT agents were visible holding their positions, and Assault was standing an appreciable distance away but still within speaking distance of Genesis, who was yelling loudly with Noelle.

“Stop arguing with me and just spit her out! Luke said Mars was hurt.”

Noelle’s human face nodded and her wolf and cow-like heads each vomited out a body. One was clothed and moaning as she struggled to turn face-up. Genesis quickly scooped her up and, cradling her in two hands, took slow steps away.

The other figure was naked and warped, curved backward as though her spine were too short and her chest too long. Nevertheless, she jumped to her feet and joined a second Sundancer clone, this one having a spiny bone-like mask growing over her face and down her neck.

“Contact, north!” shouted a PRT agent, and all eyes swung that direction to see the Siberian descend from a different roof, carrying a blue minivan over her head. Miss Militia fired the stasis gun, but the Siberian threw the van into its path, then landed on the opposite side of an excavator from Charlotte’s group. There was a scream, cut off, followed by a burst of gunfire. Miss Militia towed Charlotte along as she strafed to the side looking for a clean shot, but between the construction equipment and the debris from Leviathan’s waves, she couldn’t get a clear line of sight.

Genesis apparently decided that the PRT’s distraction was her best chance to escape quarantine, because she turned to bolt away on her five powerful legs, quickly vanishing behind a building before Assault or anyone else could challenge her. Noelle didn’t try to follow. Instead, she said something to the warped clones next to her, and the one with the … inverse hunchback? Charlotte didn’t know what to call it…that one burst into flames. Instead of manifesting a sun, she became on, her body turning into superheated plasma and trailing bright lines in Charlotte’s vision as she ran to confront the Siberian. Noelle and the other clone followed more slowly.

“I have no shot,” reported Miss Militia through the radio. “What’s happening?”

 _< I have eyes on,>_ came a report. _ <Siberian is engaging the minion Breaker. Bonesaw not present. Two friendly casualties.>_

A different voice came over the radio. _< Ma’am, we’ve received orders from command to contain Noelle; lethal measures are authorized but not encouraged. We do _not _have kill order approval. > _

“Understood.”

Miss Militia continued maneuvering to find an angle on the Siberian, and Charlotte followed her. Her mind, though, was focused on the most ominous part of the report: nobody knew where Bonesaw was.

The Siberian had scrupulously protected Bonesaw up until now, but apparently didn’t want to expose the younger cape to potential harm now that Miss Militia had found one way through her invulnerability. So wherever she was, Bonesaw was exposed. They had a chance to kill her, or at least threaten her enough that the Siberian might back off.

Charlotte concentrated on the scents around her, searching for any hint of persimmon. Miss Militia’s pumpkin pie was by far the strongest, billowing beside her as it was, but it didn’t mask or overwhelm the others. Assault’s fennel was moving about somewhere to her left. Noelle was an immense, writhing mass of ammonia, noxious and heady. That same scent contaminated the clone minions she generated, and Charlotte could smell one standing near Noelle, as well as one further away, faint, near the equally faint smell of chicken droppings. There was also a spot of brackish mud moving around somewhere below her feet. Trickster was still down in the base.

Bonesaw was too far away to smell, and none of her spiders were close either. That should have been good news, but it wasn’t. If they couldn’t find her then they couldn’t attack her, or even know what she was doing. Charlotte wondered for a second how her life had possibly reached a point where she wished that she were _closer_ to a nightmare like Bonesaw, but she shoved that thought out of her mind and forced herself to think. Her ability to sense capes wouldn’t help. That was fine. She still had her other senses and her brain. She could figure this out.

The Siberian had moved three buildings over from the parking deck before jumping down into the lot, so it made sense that Bonesaw would be in or behind one of the two that stood between them. But that didn’t quite match. Three of the PRT’s prepared escape vehicles were in that area with alert fire teams watching each other’s backs and staying alert for enemies. If the Siberian had jumped between roofs in that direction, they would have seen her. And the Siberian was fast enough to have gone the long way around in the time that Charlotte’s group had been making their way back from behind the parking deck.

Charlotte surveyed the possibilities There were several open lots; interspersed between them were a four-story brownstone apartment building, a clinic of some kind, a used car lot, and an office complex. Bonesaw would want a place where she could see the fight, so she’d be on a roof or upper floor, which ruled out the used car lot. The clinic was also too short for that. Charlotte looked for movement in the windows. She didn’t find any, but she did spot a glint of chrome. A spider bot.

“Miss Militia!” Charlotte spoke softly enough to keep her voice from carrying. “We have a chance to kill Bonesaw! I think she’s in that apartment. There’s a spider bot in the third-floor window.”

Miss Militia turned to look. “Itoga. What’s the status of these buildings?”

“Empty. We only did a cursory sweep, but no signs of squatters. If anyone did try to move back in, it stands to reason that Coil’s people would have kept them away.”

Miss Militia had a glint in her eye as she stepped into the shadow of a bulldozer and broadcast over the radio. “Miss Militia here. Target Bravo Sierra suspected south of my position. Firing for effect in three. Two.”

Her pumpkin pie scent billowed from the stasis rifle into Hero’s blue and yellow cannon, and once again a crackling yellow orb streaked away from the barrel. This time, though, the Siberian wasn’t in its path to negate its effect. The yellow ball impacted the spider bot’s body and deformed, almost as if it were a deflating balloon. The white center of the orb did not stop, though, instead piercing through the bot’s body and transfixing its splayed form against empty air. That white core brightened, then shattered into spinning fragments that whirled around each other in a fractal dance that tore through brick and glass and robot and curtains and _space itself_ , leaving a ten foot sphere filled with a jumbled mix of masonry and couch and everything else that had been there before in separate randomly sized chunks.

Miss Militia didn’t wait for the effect to settle before firing again, pulling the trigger eight more times as she sent more of those crackling orbs through the wall and windows on all sides of the first one. She had to dissolve and reform her cannon every three shots when it gave her a warning beep, but that hardly did anything to slow her rate of fire. Charlotte watched in awe as the apartment building tore apart and collapsed on itself. It was like the whole thing had been dropped into a food processor on the coarse chop setting.

“Target status?” she asked.

“Unconfirmed,” answered Butler. “I saw two more bots beyond the first, but no sign of Bonesaw. Hard to be sure from here, though.”

Movement on the roof of the office complex drew Charlotte’s eye. Miss Militia saw it too and turned toward it immediately as two voices spoke over each other on the radio.

Bonesaw was standing on the roof, waving her arms. In a child’s voice she screamed “Wait!”

That and a sudden stench of chicken droppings were their only warning before Charlotte was hauled away from Miss Militia by her neck. Miss Militia pulled the trigger, but her weapon had already shifted into a mundane large-bore rifle and the shot missed.

Dangling from a black and white arm above Butler’s bloody corpse, Charlotte realized that maybe Bonesaw hadn’t been yelling at Miss Militia but at the Siberian. This was confirmed when the little girl repeated herself.

“Wait, Sibby!”

The naked woman froze. She held Charlotte in the air and pressed a foot on Miss Militia’s chest, and she turned her head to stare up at where Bonesaw was standing.

“Don’t kill them yet! See, they didn’t hurt me. I’m fine. But you saw all those exotic attacks? Crawler will be _so_ jealous if he hears about this and doesn’t get to be hit by them ‘cause we’ve already killed the heroes that can make them. He’ll pout for weeks, and that’s no fun for anybody.”

The Siberian cocked her head, then turned slowly to stare into Charlotte’s eyes. Her lip curled into a snarl. Through some strange power of the Siberian’s invulnerability, the hand around Charlotte’s throat wasn’t making it difficult to breathe, but looking into her feral face stole every bit of oxygen from her lungs. This would be where she died. She would end here, torn apart by the Siberian. She’d always figured it would be an Empire thug that killed her, or maybe one of their capes if she was unlucky.

The Siberian pulled Charlotte closer until their noses almost touched. Her mouth opened.

“Sibby, no!” shouted Bonesaw. “I was watching and they both need to work together for those cool weapons. I want you to leave them both alone until Ned gets his chance.”

The Siberian looked faintly disappointed, but she opened her hand and let Charlotte collapse onto the ground far enough from Miss Militia that they couldn’t touch each other. She reached down and placed one finger over Charlotte’s heart--a clear warning to stay put.

That was when the bulldozer beside them lurched into the air and collapsed in on itself with a scream of metal, twisting away and down to nothing, revealing the bone-masked Sundancer clone standing near a lightless sphere that hurt to look at, like a warped funhouse mirror in the air. A black hole--Charlotte recognized the effect from the news coverage of Bakuda’s bombing campaign. She could feel it tugging on her arm and leg on that side, lifting them slightly off the ground. Why couldn’t this duplicate have had the power to manifest a miniature Pluto? Why _black holes_?!

The Siberian leapt towards the black hole and passed completely through it. She didn’t seem to damage it as she did so, but it didn’t impede here either. She grabbed the Sundancer clone by the face. The black hole drifted closer and closer, overlaying their two bodies and pulling in a swirling accretion disc of material from the construction site but leaving the two capes untouched. Then the black hole flickered and disappeared, the orbiting dirt and other residue that hadn’t yet been consumed flying off at high speed to pepper the surrounding area. The Siberian was left standing holding the dead clone.

“Sibby,” called Bonesaw. “Bring her with you. I want to look at her brain.”

The Siberian nodded agreement, turned, and prepared to leap. A tentacle shot out and wrapped around her waist—Noelle. The monstrous chimera pounced on the Siberian, biting with all the mouths that could reach, whipping with tentacles, tearing with claws. Charlotte didn’t know why Noelle bothered to try, after everything that had already failed to work. The Siberian simply stood there, immobile, invulnerable. She faked a yawn.

Then she spun, tearing through Noelle’s limbs like tissue paper, eliciting a trumpeting roar of pain and anger. The Siberian leapt away, pulling the fake Sundancer’s body along with her. A single jump took her to the office complex. Another saw her to the roof where she grabbed Bonesaw’s hand.

“See you soon!” the little psychopath called cheerily, and then they were gone.

Another roar drew Charlotte’s attention to Noelle, who had somehow already regenerated her missing limbs and flesh in a rapid burst of ammonia scented growth. Noelle’s human mouth screamed something wordless, and she charged in the direction the Siberian had gone.

Charlotte was right in her path. She scrambled frantically to roll over, to crawl away, to _somehow_ not be trampled by those enormous feet. She knew she wouldn’t be fast enough.

Then with a wash of fennel Assault was there, trying to pick her up. He was too slow to get her away, but just as Noelle was about to crash into them, he blasted out at her with a wave of his fennel scented power, and Noelle was thrown backwards through the air.

“Whoa,” said Assault. “Thanks for that. I wasn’t really excited to meet my evil twin.”

“Look out!” warned Charlotte.

Noelle had gotten to her feet and seized a huge piece of concrete rubble in her largest tentacle. She heaved it at them with more strength than Charlotte would have guessed, and with deadly accuracy. Once again, Assault lashed out with a blast of fennel that arrested the concrete as soon as it came within three feet instantly halting it in the air. Robbed of momentum, it fell heavily to the ground.

Miss Militia had stood up, finally, and started firing a machine gun at Noelle. This only served to enrage Noelle further. She started hurling everything she could reach: rubble, lumber, a wheelbarrow. Miss Milita ducked and ran out of the way. Assault stopped each one that came close, bouncing them away on harmless trajectories with his power.

“I’ve always wanted to be a Shaker,” he said. “Man, how do I make this boost permanent? How much can I pay you to be my assistant 24/7?"

Charlotte ignored his attempt to distract her from the peril of the situation with lighthearted conversation. She’d frozen up in fear enough times in the past several days that she could tell she wasn’t doing that now, so she didn’t need the distraction. Being _actually_ distracted in the middle of a fight would be just as dangerous as being paralyzed.

“Get ready,” said Assault when Noelle abandoned her barrage and started to charge them. “I’ve got this. We’ll be jumping away right….now.”

As Noelle tried to trample over the top of them, Assault did something with his power and suddenly he and Charlotte were flying through the air. Charlotte hadn’t felt the acceleration, they were just suddenly moving. They landed gently with the same abruptness, over a hundred feet away.

“I love this!” shouted Assault.

“Please, no,” said Charlotte, seeing what Assault had not. Noelle had used the redirection of her momentum to turn her charge to the side, and was now barreling at Miss Militia, who was rapidly firing grenades and flash-bangs as she fled, trying to slow or divert the monster. “Please, God, no.”

But Noelle’s inertia and resilience and regeneration were too much to overcome. Noelle lunged. Miss Militia dove to the side, but not far enough. Her legs clipped Noelle’s flank and instead of being knocked away, they stuck fast. She tried to form her weapon and shoot the entrapping flesh, but Noelle’s motion swung the heroine around, slapping her face and hands against Noelle’s body as well. They stuck. In seconds she was sucked inside.


	27. Topple 3.8

Charlotte had expected Noelle to charge the PRT forces, vomiting evil clones as she came. She didn’t. Instead, Noelle turned back in an apparent retreat, galloping into the lower floor of the incomplete building. None of the internal walls were up yet, so it was easy to track where she went despite the hydraulic lifts and stacks of construction material that dotted the floor. Even after several minutes there were no Miss Militia clones. Was she suppressing her power? Was she regaining control of herself?

If nothing else, the delay allowed the PRT to regroup, finding their own cover and switching to tactics appropriate to the new threat. Charlotte did her best to ignore Assault’s stream of profanity in order to hear the communications coming through her radio.

_< Hostile minions will likely exhibit powers similar to Miss Militia. Use Blaster protocols. Fireteam Charlie, you have stairs access. Get elevation.>_

_< Roger.>_

_< All units be advised: So far, all minions have been unclothed and physically deformed. Consider costumed capes to be potential friendlies; engage minions with prejudice. Lethal measures remain authorized. However, be cautious about using explosive ordnance. Intelligence from the Undersiders suggested that the site may be rigged with a self-destruct.>_

_< HQ has forwarded “Echidna” as the working designation for the hostile Striker Trump Noelle.>_

Assault’s cursing wound down and he peered around the cement mixer he’d chosen for their cover, watching Noelle. Or Echidna, rather, which was a downright weird name to pick for something with zero spikes but plenty of tentacles. Did the PRT just have a list of animal names to throw at new capes they fought? How else would someone arrive at Echidna? With the weird mishmash of parts, platypus would have been more appropriate, and that can’t have been in use already. Maybe someone was trying for platypus but got mixed up, landing on the _other_ egg-laying mammal? No, that was way too much of a stretch. More likely, people were probably smart enough not to spend time thinking about thematic names in the middle of a fight. The random list idea made the most sense, both as an explanation for “Echidna” and as a system for naming newly encountered capes. Thinking of names was a good way to get distracted, as evidenced by the fact that Charlotte was _still thinking about it_.

“What the hell is she doing?” Assault muttered.

Charlotte peeked around him to see. ~~Noelle~~ Echidna was shuffling back and forth across a small area. It almost looked like she was pacing.

_< Charlie is in position.>_

_< Orders from HQ: Priority One is containment—don’t let Echidna capture more capes to clone, and don’t allow her to escape into the city. Priority Two is retrieval of Miss Militia. We have insufficient assets to capture or terminate Echidna, but if Miss Militia is retrieved, she should have the firepower necessary to effect either, especially with Bouquet’s assistance. Additional cape reinforcements have been requested, but we have no ETA.>_

_< Copy that.>_

_< Echo team copies.>_

Charlotte stopped listening to the chorus of acknowledgements when Echidna stopped pacing to vomit up clones. Not just one or two bodies either! The three mouths on the front and the hidden wolf head in the rear each spewed out a naked figure, followed immediately by a second. The lion-like head in the center coughed out two at once, entangled with each other. Had she grown, for two to fit through a single mouth like that? One of Coil’s mercenaries had been stuck coming out; Miss Militia had a small frame, but she wasn’t petite enough to be only half the size of that man.

Most of the bodies leapt to their feet and darted behind cover, green clouds shimmering near them. One was moving much more feebly than the rest, and on a closer look was covered in Miss Militia’s costume, not just clinging vomit. She pushed herself up to her knees, but Noelle crouched forward until her underbelly pressed against Miss Militia’s back, sucking her inside once again.

_< Weapons free!>_

Amid the weapons fire that started up immediately, Charlotte heard quick reports.

_< Can confirm eight minions, Miss Militia remains captive.>_

_< Two targets down, one kill confirmed.>_

_< Medic to Alpha team! Man down!>_

The clones’ profiles and movements appeared distinctly inhuman. The one that jumped on top of a pallet of bricks to fire wildly was even more distorted than the others—instead of holding a shifting weapon to fire at her enemies, the green light played up and down her arms, and shoulders, morphing them into metallic mechanisms belching thunder. An impact forced her head sharply to the side, and in a play of green light Charlotte saw a _dent_ in her cheekbone. A barrage into her chest followed, and while some ricocheted off in a burst of sparks, others penetrated meatily with a spurt of blood. That clone toppled forward, landing on its face. It twitched a few times, but only with further bullet impacts.

_< Three down.>_

Taking cover behind a pile of I-beams, another duplicate manifested an enormous six-barreled rotary gun longer than Charlotte was tall. It opened up towards one of the buildings, tearing gaping holes in the wall with a deluge of bullets fed by never-ending ammunition.

“Right,” said Assault. “That’s my job.”

He leapt from behind the cement mixer and sprinted forward in a strange bounding motion that accelerated with every step and zigzagged with impossible changes in direction. Within seconds he was intercepting the rotary gun’s barrage, each bullet deflecting as it hit him and chewing up the ground instead. As he reached the building’s concrete slab an explosion erupted from behind a pallet, peppering the area with shrapnel for yards.

Assault appeared startled, but not hurt, and he continued forward.

_< Assault, one of the clones has mined the whole area with claymores and other devices that appear to be anti-personnel. The weapons she manifests are persistent and don’t disappear when her power shifts.>_

_< Thank you, Captain,>_ came Assault’s voice. _< I can handle claymores.>_

He proved that as he set off four more explosions on his approach to the rotary gun, which continued to inundate him with a tide of metal.

Charlotte saw the green light begin to flicker around the barrels of the rotary gun and the trap became clear.

“Wait, Assault!” she shouted into her radio. “Get away!”

He didn’t wait, charging forward as the gun dissolved in a swirl of green and was replaced by a tripod-mounted flame thrower. Her warning did come in time for him to kick to the side, narrowly avoiding the wash of flames that tracked his movements. He dove along the ground in a baseball slide, kicking the stack I-beams. His kick imparted much of the kinetic energy he’d absorbed from the bullets, sending them instantly into motion. They speared through the two clones sheltering behind them, and the flame thrower vanished. The massive beams kept going, not only killing another clone but also pulping the front half of Echidna’s body, including all three forward-facing heads. The human torso on top was severed from the rest of the body and tumbled to the ground.

Assault followed in the path cleared by the I-beams, heading for a gaping wound with the clear intent of digging Miss Militia out of the ruined flesh. He was interrupted by another warning over the radio.

_< Get out! There’s a thermobaric—> _

And Charlotte went deaf as a huge fireball erupted where Assault had stood. The heat of it washed over her, even half hidden behind the cement mixer. The explosion didn’t just vanish away like a firework, or like those mines Assault had triggered earlier, but lingered in the air for what felt like forever. When it did clear, the destruction it left behind was intense, though far more localized than Charlotte expected. There was an abrupt cutoff where everything transitioned from totally ruined to mostly undamaged.

Almost everything near the center of the explosion was a burned out husk. The exception, of course, was Echidna. Two of her heads had already regrown, and a smoking hole on her back rapidly filled in. As Charlotte watched, a mound of flesh bubbled up to reform her human features. She screamed with every mouth at once, which was just loud enough for Charlotte to barely hear over the ringing in her ears.

With her hearing compromised, Charlotte didn’t notice the two PRT agents approaching from behind until they had run right past her towards the blast zone. A few paces outside of the damaged area they bent and lifted a figure to his feet. Assault was conscious enough to drape his arms over their shoulders and limp towards safety.

Echidna spit out a clone who stood quickly and formed a shotgun which she aimed at the retreating men. Fortunately, the rest of the PRT were covering them, and she was gunned down before getting off a single shot.

Assault’s costume appeared singed, but not badly burned—at least from the front. As he got closer, Charlotte realized that he wasn’t limping so much as tapping his toes on the ground to activate his power and help move them forward. When the PRT agents had helped him to reach the cement mixer, she could see that large burns covered his legs and lower back. In places she couldn’t tell if the charred material was skin or fabric, and in others it was all too clear.

Her ears seemed to be recovering because she heard the heavy steps of another agent just before he arrived. She recognized Agent Itoga when he started reporting through his radio.

“Assault seriously injured by FAE detonation. Medevac necessary. Echidna’s regeneration is rapid and comprehensive, at least Brute 6. Please advise.”

_< Console copies, please stand by.>_

There was a pause, then a new voice announced, _< New Wave Fliers en route, ETA two minutes.>_

“Understood. Team Delta, come help exfil the wounded.”

_< On our w–>_

“Look out!”/ _< Incoming!>_

The warnings were shouted from multiple directions, and Charlotte heard the thunderous steps of Echidna at a run. A peek through the gap between the cab and the drum of the cement mixer revealed the monster more than halfway to them and closing. A clone was perched on her back, firing a pistol with each hand and forcing PRT agents back behind cover.

Charlotte did the only thing she could, jumping to Assault’s side and placing her hand on his shoulder—one spot that appeared untouched by the explosion. His fennel cloud surrounded them just in time as the rapidly approaching scent of ammonia heralded Echidna slamming bodily into the cement mixer. Assault’s power robbed it of momentum, forcing the truck to remain immobile. That kept it from tipping over to crush Charlotte and the others, but it did nothing to prevent Echidna from crushing the truck itself with her massive strength.

Metal tore above them, and Echidna’s bovine head thrust through the wall of the metal drum, snarling to bare long sharp teeth. A thin tentacle whipped over the top and speared down at them, but came to an abrupt halt in mid air. A thicker one swung from the side, and the instant it met Assault’s cloud it bounced back the way it had come. The mouth above them vomited out another warped clone, but it too reversed direction before it could get close to them.

Charlotte glanced at Assault and saw that his mouth was a grimace of pain. His mask obscured the upper half of his face, but his eyes were screwed closed.

A warm touch on her leg was accompanied by a flooding miasma of ammonia, and Charlotte looked down to see a tentacle wrapped around her calf. It yanked at her, and she jerked an inch before Assault’s power stole her momentum and anchored her in place. The end of the tentacle that was gripping her leg couldn’t move either, so Noelle’s vast strength pulled her main body closer, the cement mixer deforming under her weight.

Charlotte could smell Miss Militia’s pumpkin pie scent trapped in the middle of Echidna’s body. She tried to push the ammonia scent away, but the smells felt heavier than they had before, and even straining she could barely hold them away for a few seconds before they rushed back. Harsh ammonia concentrated, pulling excess pumpkin pie with it to form two balls in Echidna’s gullet. One was smooth and spherical, the other crumpled and misshapen like a rough clump of aluminum foil. Then Echidna vomited out three bodies.

One was wearing a costume.

“Assault!” Charlotte yelled to get his attention. “Grab the real Miss Militia!”

Assault opened his eyes in time to see which direction the clones were bouncing off of his power, and he launched the two of them upward toward Miss Militia.

Or, he tried to. The tentacle was keeping Charlotte anchored in place, and even Assault’s wash of fennel didn’t give it enough impetus to move very far. Charlotte’s hand slipped off his shoulder as he leapt into the air without her, but she managed to keep contact, sliding her hand down his arm, then shifting to his knee and shin. That was enough for him to get within three feet of Miss Militia and catch her. Their motion arrested, and they fell to the ground in slow motion. Charlotte kept hold of Assault with her hand until he reached the ground, then pressed her shoe up against his knee to maintain contact.

Assault was breathing heavily, yelling into his arm to suppress the screams of pain from his burns. Still, he kept his power concentrated on Charlotte, preventing Echidna from snatching her away. Miss Militia was barely conscious, her power flickering between various forms. The PRT agents were…

Charlotte looked around. Without Assault close enough to protect them, the PRT agents had been exposed. One had backpedaled far enough to get out of range, but two, including Agent Itoga, and been snatched up by Echidna and were disappearing inside her.

She didn’t have time to worry about them, though, because the two Miss Militia clones were approaching her. The other PRT officers were shooting from their positions around the lot, but Noelle loomed large, soaking up the bullets to shield her minions.

“Hello, Bouquet,” said one clone. She was the one whose scent was smooth, and she was different from all the others in that Charlotte didn’t see any inhuman deformities. Her power danced from hand to hand, shifting between forms.

The other one, whose smell was a crumpled distortion, didn’t say anything that Charlotte could understand. She was easily the most mutated duplicate yet, and her lower jaw extended a good three inches beyond her upper jaw in a menacing underbite. A long forked tongue twisted out of her mouth in time with a bubbly vocalization. It was like the malevolent zombies from that film Keesha had talked her into watching, only a hundred times scarier. The clone crawled forward all fours, using joints that didn’t move like human knees and elbows should.

Charlotte used her free hand to feel for her pronged knife, but she didn’t draw it. Miss Militia was the very definition of a gun fight, and the knife Charlotte had brought was woefully inadequate.

“Smart choice,” said the normal-looking one. Approaching from the opposite side as she was, Assault couldn’t stop her from reaching out and grabbing Charlotte’s arm tightly. Pumpkin pie, tinged with ammonia, spun into a gun that Charlotte recognized. Once again, Charlotte pushed the scents away, forcing the pain gun into a non-tinker form, but the smells remained too heavy for her and as soon as she released her grip on her power the pain gun reformed.

Well, there was another way to suppress her power. Charlotte wrenched her arm, twisting to escape from the duplicate’s grip. If she could break contact, she wouldn’t be boosting the clone any more. She didn’t come close to breaking free, and the clone simply let her gripping arm move with Charlotte, using the other to lift the pain gun.

Just before the clone could aim it, the real Miss Militia formed her power into a pistol and snapped off a shot.

It took a second for Charlotte to register that the shot had missed, and then to understand why. The mutated clone had dissolved into a writhing green cloud that spun through the air to reform at Miss Militia’s side, one hand already on her pistol and pushing it to the side. She stomped on Miss Militia’s stomach, then dissolved again, teleporting through her cloud to the gun that the other clone held, then to a rifle that one of the PRT agents had dropped. She tried to pick it up but couldn’t manage to grip it with her fingers.

The clone at Charlotte’s side fired the pain beam and Miss Militia screamed.

“Oh, that _is_ satisfying. Far more than when we used it against Bonesaw. I could do this for the rest of your life.” The clone fired one more time, then lowered her weapon. “Sadly, I also want you dead.” She formed Hero’s blue and yellow tinker cannon and aimed it.

No. Being threatened with death was frightening, but the one thing she actually regretted since discovering her power was being responsible for Squealer’s death. Charlotte _refused_ to be the reason that Miss Militia died.

As the clone squeezed the trigger, Charlotte moved. She slammed the side of the cannon, trying to divert the shot towards Echidna, who was already starting to cough up copies of the two PRT agents she’d taken. Charlotte was weaker than the clone, though, and although she managed to make the shot go wide of both Assault and Miss Militia, she couldn’t get it all the way towards the true threat. The ball of energy hit the cab of the cement mixer and started to blender it just like it had the building.

Charlotte drew her knife and feinted at the Miss Militia holding her. As expected, the clone was faster and stronger, stepping back out of striking distance, the tinker cannon reverting to a normal gun. Charlotte saw a flicker of green as she continued her motion, throwing the knife towards the maelstrom of light that was still chopping the truck to pieces. With the same weapon-based targeting that Charlotte had seen so far, the teleporting clone appeared in midair touching the knife, moving with the same velocity. In a split second both knife and clone flew a few more feet and entered the destructive tinker effect. They wouldn’t be coming out.

Unfortunately, all of Charlotte’s movement had been more than adequate to break her contact with Assault, and the tentacle around her leg lifted her into the air. She landed butt-first against Echidna’s side and the hot flesh clung to her legs, growing over them before she could even try to escape.

Charlotte clung to a bony ridge to try to keep herself from being pulled inside. One of her hands found a firm hold, but the other slipped off and was sucked beneath the surface. She saw Miss Militia—the real one—form a mortar and fire three shots into the hole that Echidna had emerged from. Somehow, there were more than three detonations, explosions going off in a chain reaction underground and in a string up the building, floor by floor.

As the ammonia scent enveloped her and Echidna’s dark brown flesh climbed up her neck to cover her mouth, her nose, and finally her eyes, Charlotte felt the ground crack and collapse underneath them, dropping Echidna into Coil’s self-destructing base.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This concludes Arc 3!
> 
> Yes, Echidna is an appropriate name for Noelle that references the “mother of monsters” from Greek Myth. Unfortunately, Charlotte isn’t familiar with that story, and she didn’t have a chance to ask anyone about it in this chapter. Given the way things played out, it’s hard to say when she’ll find out that it wasn’t a random animal name, or whether she’ll still be thinking about naming justification when she gets another opportunity to ask.


	28. Topsy-Turvy 4.1

Once again, a soft sound informed Taylor that she was clenching her jaw, and she forced her muscles to relax. The third time it had happened she’d tried to stick her tongue between her teeth so that she’d notice if she started grinding them again. That had backfired, with the relief of a physical distraction from her thoughts overriding the aversion from the mild pain, and she’d had to stop herself when she realized how much damage she was starting to do.

The spider bot struggled a bit more as one of its legs broke free from the silk lines she’d used to immobilize it. Her spiders renewed its wrapping. The thing was no longer wearing Lisa’s face—Taylor had used her bugs to detach the skin and cartilage, carting that scrap of flesh away for a lonely burial under a nearby tree. The plastic googly eyes were still attached to its legs, though, mocking with the reminder of what had been done to Lisa’s body. Taylor hoped that was all that had been done to her body. She couldn’t remove the plastic eyes, though, because they were the only feature remaining to distinguish this bot from the others that had been following Bonesaw around. If she happened to lose track of this one, she needed to be able to know when she found it again.

She unclenched her jaw.

Rachel was pacing, Ink following at her heels while Magic and Socks watched from nearby. Brian was trying to call someone on the radio, but they weren’t answering.

Without Bouquet’s boost, Taylor felt so _limited_. Her range was stalled firmly in its usual spherical shape, reaching a measly four and a half blocks. That had been good before, more than double its size compared to when she’d first gone out as a cape, but after the total awareness she’d had of a mile-long corridor, it felt pitiful. Blind.

“Where are they?” Rachel shouted. “I’m not going to wait any more.”

Brian hooked the radio on his belt and tried to calm Rachel down. Taylor just focused on the bugs at the edge of her range, searching again for any sign of their promised backup.

She tried yet again to mold her range into a more useful shape, remembering the feeling of malleability that had come with Bouquet’s touch. It felt like something she ought to be able to do. She could imagine the way it had flattened into a disc at her direction, then squeezed out into an oblong club that she could swing around herself. That had let her be effective, had let her reach far enough to find and harass Shatterbird, to set up the shot that killed the bitch.

It was not enough. It was _Jack_ who needed to die. Jack and fucking Bonesaw, who had ripped Lisa’s face off and glued it to one of her sick creations.

Taylor unclenched her jaw again. Despite all her efforts, her power stayed stubbornly, rigidly unchanged. A stupid, inadequate sphere.

Maybe Rachel was right. It might be better to just go by themselves, rather than waste time waiting for help that might not appear. Relying on the _Merchants_ was not a recipe for success, especially with half their capes already captured.

Taylor was about to speak up and say so, when a group of bugs entered her range. They didn’t come from the side, but from above. The swarm was spread out over a large shape, a solid vehicle of some sort. Looking up, though, she couldn’t see anything above them.

“Something’s coming,” she announced. Rachel and Brian cut off their argument and followed her gaze upward.

“Where?” demanded Rachel.

Brian instead wanted to know “What is it?”

The object descended invisibly and silently. Taylor absently noted that if she had flattened her range with Bouquet’s boost right now, the thing wouldn’t have yet entered her senses, giving her far less warning. Something to remember for the future—not to ignore the possibility of aerial attacks. She clamped down on that thought. Bouquet had wanted to be a hero, and Taylor was not going to be party to any more kidnappings.

It was tempting to recruit her, though. Bouquet’s power was just so _useful_. On top of that, Bouquet’s cape sense was a huge danger in anyone else’s hands. She would know whenever a parahuman got close, in costume or out. Coil may have been responsible for leaking the E88 identities, but the Protectorate had taken swift advantage. The heroes hadn’t respected the unwritten rules when villain identities were handed to them before, and there was no reason to expect them to do so if they had access to someone who could uncover those identities effortlessly.

Taylor just had to hope that Charlotte was smart enough to realize that the Undersiders knew who she was too, and that attacks on someone’s civilian life could be answered in kind. That was the whole reason behind the rules in the first place.

The better scenario would be if, after spending time with the heroes, Charlotte recognized their hypocrisy. She’d overheard enough of the Undersiders’ version of events to ask some of the right questions. Maybe Taylor could help that along by dropping information in the right places. Getting Bouquet to work with (or defect to) the Undersiders would be difficult, but her boost to Taylor’s power alone would make any attempt worth it, not to mention what she could do for the others, and of course her Thinker ability.

That was for later, though. Taylor had investigated the vehicle enough with her bugs to be able to answer her teammates.

“It’s the Merchants,” she said. “Some kind of helicopter thing. I’m guessing it has one of Squealer’s stealth fields. I recognize Whirlygig, Whizzer, and Trainwreck, plus twenty nine normals.” At least, she thought they were normals. No masks, no costumes, and more tellingly, none of them were being treated with the deference that a cape would get from their gang.

When it reached a height of 150 feet, the stealth effect suddenly vanished and the roar of turbines washed over them as the massive airship appeared. Its fuselage was about the size of a double-wide tractor trailer, and it had eight spinning blades of different sizes spread across it asymmetrically. Two were mounted on top like a normal helicopter, but the other six were attached to struts or stubby wings sticking out from the bottom. The tail was thick and heavy-looking. Instead of a propeller, it had more of those glowing discs that had been on Squealer’s tank the night Lisa had helped Taylor rescue Bryce and Charlotte.

As the aircraft approached the ground, a long rope tumbled out of an opening in the tail. When the end of the rope touched the ground, Whizzer appeared at its base before teleporting again to appear right in front of Grue.

“You losers called us. We’re here. Where’re the Nine?”

Grue crossed his arms. “We’re waiting on one more group.”

“What for?” Whizzer demanded. “You don’t think the Merchants are good enough? We have the firepower.”

“Maybe for a straight engagement, but this is a prepared trap we’re trying to turn around on them. I don’t want to be the idiot who underestimated an S-class threat and died because I charged in without the rest of my backup.”

Whizzer grumbled a bit but didn’t argue. Moments later, another flying object entered Taylor’s range. This one was smaller and lower, traveling not too far above the rooftops.

 _“Empire capes inbound,”_ she said through her bugs. Before long, a large slab of concrete landed nearby carrying Rune, Stormtiger, Hookwolf, and Othala.

There was some more posturing as the groups sized each other up, and Whizzer decided to provoke the new arrivals by asking, “This is all you brought?”

Hookwolf literally bristled, metal spikes appearing and disappearing, but he didn’t look actually angry. Instead he responded calmly, “Other members of the Chosen are guarding our other interests.”

Before Whizzer could respond, Taylor spoke up. _“This is one of Bonesaw’s spiderbots.”_ She had a swarm of fliers gather above the thing as her spiders bit through the binding silk to release it. _“Bonesaw told Bitch it would lead her to her dogs. We don’t know which members of the Nine will be there, except that Bonesaw and Siberian are engaging Coil and the PRT right now, so it won’t be them. I’ll scout ahead with my bugs and tell you what we’re facing. If you remain in the air, hopefully we can retain the element of surprise and turn their ambush back on them.”_

There was more face-saving argument, but Taylor ignored it, falling in step with Rachel behind the bot. The plan was simple, made sense, and didn’t use the Merchant or Empire capes as bait. She was sure they would go along with it.

As they walked, Rachel slowly pumped up her dogs. Taylor remembered her complaining only days ago that they weren’t trained enough for her to use her power on them, but Taylor trusted her to keep control. And if they did rampage a bit, they were up against the Nine. It wasn’t a time to hold back.

After about half a mile the dogs were the size of small ponies, and Taylor sensed a dead spot up ahead. The insects that approached it died, leaving her blind in a twenty-foot circle in the middle of a softball diamond in a public park. She relayed this to the others, and did her best to keep the insects acting normally in that area so as not to tip off whoever was waiting there that she was close.

Taylor searched the path ahead of them for booby traps and anything else that might be out of place, but aside from a track of flattened earth where something heavy had been dragged from the road to the ominous dead spot in her senses, she didn’t find any evidence that the area had been disturbed. The spiderbot clambered through a broken fence around the park. As soon as it touched the grass it froze, and a panel popped open on its back to reveal an old style cassette player. With a click, it started to play.

 _< You made it! Congrats!>_ came Bonesaw’s cheerful voice. _< I wanted this to just be a present, but Manny insisted on giving you his test at the same time. And since he doesn’t talk much, he said I could explain the test while I tell you about your present, which I’m absolutely sure you’ll love.>_

 _< Manny’s test is always the same—you have to change in a way that costs you something. So the truth is that I made you _two _presents. And after I show them to you, Mannequin wants you to pick which one to keep. I really don’t know what you’ll pick, because they are both super awesome. And Manny won’t let you cheat. He and Spotlight are guarding the test and will enforce the rules. So, let’s go and I’ll tell you all about it! >_

The tape clicked off and the panel slid shut. Then the spider bot ran at full speed toward the softball diamond. Rachel sprinted after it, and Taylor kept pace while she relayed the relevant information to the Merchant and Chosen capes. It was obvious that she and Rachel wouldn’t be able to arrive unnoticed, especially with the three horse-sized dogs loping beside them. The best thing to do was avoid being separated. If they could draw the attention of Mannequin and whoever Spotlight was, maybe the other groups could manage a surprise strike. Grue was following, too, but not at Rachel’s headlong rush.

When they burst onto the softball diamond, Taylor saw that the dead space was centered on the pitcher’s mound and was occupied by an opaque white box about five feet on each side. Metal chains were draped across it, linking irregular white orbs made of the same material. Those chains shifted, retracting inside the orbs and pulling them together with disturbingly little sound. In seconds they had piled on top of one another, and Taylor realized that the orbs were individual parts of Mannequin that had been dispersed across the box in faux relaxation. He raised a hand and mimed a yawn. Then his head fell off and struck the ground, trailing a chain behind it. One by one his other parts tumbled to the dirt, lying in a heap before reassembling into a humanoid shape.

The spider bot climbed up on top of the box, and with a click the cassette player resumed its audio recording.

_< So, I’m going to explain Manny’s test first, because if you do something stupid without listening then you might ruin both of your presents. He built this thing for the test. He calls it Schrodinger’s Box. Apparently, some scientist figured out how to use poison to make a cat both alive and dead, which sounds absolutely fascinating and gives me all sorts of ideas. The original Schroding guy used radiation or atoms, though, which isn’t my specialty, or Manny’s, and he could somehow do it with only one cat and one poison. This version uses two dogs, each with their own vial of poison. If you do this right, then when the box opens one will still be alive. Your job is to pick which one dies.>_

Rachel growled—actually growled—and stared at Mannequin’s still figure. Ink, Magic, and Socks seemed to understand, and a trio of low rumbles joined hers.

 _< I won’t go into how it works,>_ Bonesaw continued, _< but basically the box measures how heavy the dogs are. If you use your power on one, the vial of poison will break open and kill everything in that half of the box. After thirty seconds the poison will go inert, and the box can be safely opened. Open it or use your power on the other dog before then, and both vials break. I definitely don’t recommend being close to the box if it opens before the poison deactivates. It’s one of Mannequin’s, not mine, but it’s still nasty.>_

Taylor didn’t know if Rachel would be able to choose between two of her dogs like that. She would hate herself for any choice she made. But if both ended up dying that would be even worse. And with whatever insecticide cloud was shrouding the pitcher’s mound, Taylor wasn’t able to get any bugs close to try to interfere with the mechanisms, so she wasn’t sure if she could help.

 _< So with that out of the way, let me introduce you to my presents! I’m super excited about this, and I have _so _many more ideas, so please do your best to pass all the tests so you can join our family. Working with you is going to be super fun! First up, we have Cerberus. >_

Half of the box shimmered and became translucent. Inside, a four-legged figure paced in a circle. When the wall cleared enough for it to see Rachel it barked with all three of its heads. Taylor recognized the heads as Roxy, Buddy, and Bruno. Their shared body was twice as large as Bruno’s had been before, with patches of different fur types. The box muffled their sounds, but they pawed at the wall and Taylor could tell that Roxy was whining. Bruno nipped at her ear to quiet her, somehow stretching his neck to reach all the way across Buddy’s head between them.

 _< Cerberus was tricky because I wanted to give them shared control of their body without combining their brains,> _explained the cheerful recording. _< Finding a way to keep them from fighting over the legs and tails took me almost an hour of fiddling. I ended up needing to use parts from that dead bulldog’s brain to coordinate the signals right. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you, but right now I need to show you Lassie!>_

The other half of the box shimmered, and Taylor’s brain stopped. She didn’t need to hear Bonesaw’s explanation to know what she’d done. Lucy, the Gordon setter, lay mournfully on the floor, a patch of wet fur under each of her rich brown eyes showing where the animal had wept. Set above them and facing to the side were bottle green eyes, staring out from the jet back fur that covered most of Lucy’s body.

Those eyes. It was Lisa. Lisa inside of Lucy’s body, but with other…changes. She jumped to her feet and started barking, jerking her head to the side as she did so. A pair of human arms emerging from the middle of her back waved frantically. There were no words, but the message was obvious. _Run._ With each motion, the blonde hair that had been grafted to the top of her head swung back and forth. It was arranged into pigtails with bright pink hair ties, a childish style unlike any Taylor had ever seen her friend wear—one more indignity to top off a heaping mound of horrific violation.

_< …said her name was Lisa, and the dog was Lucy, so Lassie fit perfectly. And I remember Lassie on TV was supposed to be a smart dog. Well, this one’s even smarter! I did the opposite with Lassie as I tried for Cerberus, went for full mental integration. Except for the extra motor cortex I took out to drive the spider bot, her new brain incorporates everything from both of the ones she started with. I’ve never done that before. Until now I always just had one drive and another ride along, so thanks for the inspiration! I can’t wait to try it again.>_

Bonesaw’s recording kept speaking, but Taylor and Rachel were both done listening.

“Magic, guard!” said Rachel, pointing at the box. Shifting her focus to Mannequin, she shouted, “Ink, Socks, kill!”

At the same moment, Taylor gave the signal for Rune and Trainwreck to attack along the line of targeting bugs she had set up for them.

Mannequin burst into motion as Trainwreck pulled the trigger on his mounted gun, hands shooting out and spearing into the ground like grappling hooks, yanking his body away before the bullets struck. The large block of concrete that Rune sent at him had time to correct its course, but Mannequin pirouetted and flowed gracefully around it without colliding. The telephone pole that followed struck him in the chest, and Mannequin absorbed the blow by falling to pieces.

By then Socks had reached Mannequin and seized an upper leg in his mouth. He’d grown even more and was now the size of a draft horse. The vigorous way he worried the leg back and forth would have snapped the spine of anyone that still had one, but Mannequin obviously didn’t. His scattered parts pulled back together, the chains of his neck and left arm disconnecting where they were trapped under the telephone pole. Links were left behind, and the new ends snapped together as if by magnets. More tinker bullshit.

For some reason Mannequin didn’t disconnect the orb in Socks’ mouth. Instead, he left the chain dangling loose while the dog shook his leg around. His tactic became clear a moment later when Ink lunged at him. Before Ink’s jaws could close around him, the loose chain retracted at blinding speed, yanking Mannequin out of the way in a flying leap that ended with him impacting Socks in the side of the head. Blades had sprouted from his hands and untrapped foot, and they sank into Sock’s cheek and lower jaw. The one aimed at his eye was deflected by a bony protrusion, but he still recoiled in pain and dropped Mannequin’s leg. He sprang away from her and ran a short distance, finally emerging from the poisonous cloud that was killing Taylor’s insects.

Ink and Socks prowled forward, hemming Mannequin in. Rune’s platform flew closer, and she threw more objects at him. A few hit, though with little effect. Trainwreck adjusted his aim along Taylor’s insect reticule and pulled the trigger again. This time the bullets struck. Mannequin’s orbs stood up to the first few, absorbing the hits by disconnecting, but then two bullets struck the same surface of an orb lying on the ground, and that was enough to overwhelm the armor. The piece making up Mannequin’s upper right arm burst open, spilling fluid and internal mechanisms across the ground.

Mannequin didn’t seem to care. He pulled his parts back together, disconnecting the broken piece and simply continuing with a shorter arm. He scuttled crablike across the ground, somehow evading further bullets and Rune’s projectiles alike. Ink and Socks circled to keep him in place.

A panel on Mannequin’s shortened arm slid open, revealing a gun barrel. Taylor wasn’t particularly surprised by that, though the direction it was aimed did confuse her. Rather than pointing at Ink or Socks, or even at Taylor or Rachel, the gun was lined up to point back toward the pitcher’s mound. For a panicked moment she thought he was holding Lisa hostage, but the angle was wrong for that. It wasn’t even pointing at Magic, who was crouching near the box.

When the gun fired, what came out was far slower than a normal bullet, and Taylor could track the object’s flaming path with her eyes. The instant it entered the dead zone in her senses, the insecticidal gas burst into explosive flame. Blind from the flash, Taylor tried to clear her eyes. Vision was slow to return, and she got a better picture of what happened from her swarm, which could now enter the previous blank spot.

Mannequin had used the distraction to race past Ink and Socks and disappear into the dugout. Meanwhile, Magic had been thrown to the ground and suffered major burns all over her body. A good sized chunk of one shoulder was missing.

“Magic needs help,” she told Rachel, who grunted in response. Almost immediately, Magic started to grow in size yet again. The damage didn’t regenerate, but it spread out and was less debilitating to her now larger body as new muscle and bone appeared.

Rune’s platform had reached the softball diamond by now, and the relative quiet was shattered by the sudden appearance of the Merchant’s descending airship from behind its stealth field. Mannequin remained in the dugout, away from the direct line of fire from either aerial group, but he didn’t look like he was retreating.

On the pitcher’s mound, a door on the back of the box cracked open. Hands, lots of hands, emerged and forced the opening wider, and something clambered out of the small compartment that had been hidden there. A glaring brightness made it hard to look at, and all Taylor could see were arms.

She sent a cloud of gnats to investigate. It was a woman, or the upper half of one. Nine pairs of arms had been grafted onto her torso, in addition to her original pair. Her legs and hips were missing, the space being used as attachment points for more of the arms. The arms were all different sizes and skin tones, and not all of them ended in hands. Seven of the wrists were capped with bright sunlamps, which were responsible for the blinding glare. This must be Spotlight, then, from Bonesaw’s message.

The sunlamps turned inward, illuminating the figure instead of blinding observers, and Rune’s scream of “Kayden!” was enough for Taylor to recognize the slack face and brown hair from the leaked E88 identities. This was why Purity hadn’t been at the meeting.

Stormtiger was fastest on the uptake, immediately throwing his air claws at Spotlight. The compressed air exploded against her side and bloodily severed one of the grafted arms.

Taylor had a moment to register the injury, to notice the scars crisscrossing the thing that Kayden had become. Then the figure blazed with white incandescence and shot into the sky, trailing corkscrew beams of light from each of its many hands.

Purity had been the fastest flyer in the Bay, and Spotlight retained that speed. She zipped through the air firing beams of light down at the assembled villains. Her aim was poor, but she made up for it with quantity, striking a dozen places at once. One beam punched straight into Stormtiger’s chest. It hammered him to the ground, plowing through the cheap metal bleachers, but he stood up unscathed. The benefits of having a Trump like Othala on hand.

Another beam blasted off one of Ink’s rear legs, and the greyhound howled long and loud. Rachel started forward, but Taylor grabbed her.

“Not yet! We have to kill Spotlight before we can help Ink!”

She pulled Rachel back towards Grue to hide in his spreading darkness. It wouldn’t save them from a hit, but it might make Spotlight less able to target them.

Taylor was trying to get hornets and wasps onto Spotlight. There was no possible way for them to catch up to her, so they had to hover in the air and predict where she would fly, hoping to latch onto her skin or hair as she collided with them. Most that managed to be in the right place were pushed uselessly out of the way by the wind of her passing. Many that actually made contact were killed by the collision. Only a tiny handful managed to cling to Spotlight. Their stings had no visible effect, induced no pain response or flinching.

Meanwhile, Spotlight’s beams had damaged the Merchant’s aircraft, punching holes in the side and shearing off one of the blades. The whole ship was now listing slightly. Trainwreck was still firing his mounted gun. He’d managed to injure two more of Spotlight’s arms and shatter a sunlamp, but he was having trouble tracking her at the incredible speed she was traveling.

Rune’s platform had narrowly avoided being struck, and she appeared to be retreating with Othala and Hookwolf. They set down behind a large building for cover, then Rune peeked around the side to send more projectiles after Mannequin, who had now emerged from the dugout and was dancing around Socks, stabbing with his blades. Taylor’s spiders and dragonflies were doing their best to gum up Mannequin’s chains with dragline silk. So far, he didn’t appear to be impeded by it at all.

At the same time, she grabbed some of the hornets still clinging to Spotlight and sent them to crawl towards her head. The wind ripped them away before they made it. Only two reached their goal. One crawled up to Spotlight’s eye and stung it quickly. A blink of her eyelids dislodged it, but at least some damage had been done. The second hornet tried to reach her other eye, but the quick changes of direction sent buffeting winds from all directions, and it barely managed to sit in place.

Stormtiger took to the air again, flying after Spotlight and trying to blast her with his Aerokinesis. He evaded the light beams he could, and tanked the others with Othala’s invulnerability. Every time he was hit, he was flung far away by the kinetic force of the beam and had to fly back to the fight.

Taylor had finally managed to get a thick enough rope of silk around Mannequin’s neck and tied it off to the chainlink backstop. It jerked him to a halt as he tried to dodge a lunge from Socks, and the dog bit down on his torso. A swish of blades severed the silk line, but he was caught now, and a continued barrage of stones and mailboxes were raining down on him.

Mannequin’s jaw opened and worked in a laughing motion, and Taylor’s bugs started to die as a wave of gas billowed out from his head.

“Socks, run!” she yelled, anticipating his next move, but Grue’s darkness had spread across half the field by now, and she was not close enough to the edge of it for her voice to carry out. A spark of flame ignited the gas, and it exploded all around Socks’ head. Stunned, he dropped Mannequin, who gathered himself together yet again.

Suddenly, the whole field seemed to lurch. It took a second for Taylor to realize what she was sensing through her bugs. All of Rune’s projectiles that lay discarded on the ground, from the initial telephone pole and concrete slab to the most recent rocks and mailboxes, every object lurched into motion at once. Mannequin had clearly disregarded them just as much as Taylor had, not thinking that Rune had retained control of them. They rushed together and formed a solid ball around him, lifting Mannequin into the air and quickly carrying him away over the rooftops.

Rune and Othala flew after him on a platform, and Hookwolf followed on the ground in his changer form. They were clearly planning to continue the fight somewhere that Spotlight couldn’t harry them.

Without Mannequin in the way, the Undersiders were free to approach Rachel’s dogs and… the box.

“Grue,” called Taylor, and a space in the darkness opened up around her and Rachel. “Give us a path to Ink and Socks!”

Stormtiger saw Rune carting Mannequin away and turned in the air to follow, but was slammed to the ground by another beam from Spotlight. She hung in the air above him, directing four corkscrewing beams around each other into his fallen form, simultaneously shooting at the Merchants with several more arms. Trainwreck’s gun was obliterated, and he leapt aside as the wreckage fell away.

After another ten seconds or so, Stormtiger’s invulnerability timed out, and his body vanished in a blaze of light, leaving a deep crater behind.

By now Taylor and Rachel had reached Ink’s side and started digging him out of the dissolving meatsuit that Rachel’s power created for her dogs. Socks approached, still dazed from the explosion and limping from some stab wounds. He wouldn’t be up for much of a fight.

Grue’s darkness reached the pitcher’s mound, and immediately Spotlight darted down to hover over it, spinning in a circle as she blasted the ground around it. The darkness was blown away, along with several feet of dirt in a wide ring around the box.

Bonesaw’s recording clicked on again, playing at fast forward for several unintelligible seconds before slowing to normal speed again.

_< Naughty! You’re trying to break the rules. Don’t worry, Spotlight and Mannequin will keep you from cheating.>_

That was good news, probably. Bonesaw hadn’t listed any other countermeasures, so if they could get past Spotlight, they could still save Lisa. And while she focused on Stormtiger, Spotlight had stopped in place long enough for Taylor to send a swarm after her. The Merchant aircraft was coming closer as well, and pretty soon they would be in range for some of the handguns that the regular gang members were carrying.

The problem was Spotlight’s maneuverability. Taylor would need to attack fast and hard, take her down before she could fly off or kill the bugs. Pain, like she’d used against the Merchants in her territory, wouldn’t be enough. Spotlight hadn’t reacted to pain so far. She would have to cause enough damage to disable or kill Bonesaw’s abomination. She poised her swarm for just long enough to get them in position, then struck.

Wasps and hornets flew into Spotlight’s nose and mouth, stinging and trying to clog her airway. They didn’t make it far, as they encountered a mesh screen at the back of her throat and nasal passages. Still, Taylor packed in as many as she could. Flying ants bored into Spotlight’s ears, biting and chewing in hopes of disrupting her balance sensation.

Spotlight started blasting again, spinning to send her beams of light in all directions. Taylor, Rachel, and Brian threw themselves to the ground in an effort to present smaller targets. Taylor formed swarm clones floating in the air, hoping to divert some of the firepower away from her and her teammates. It worked. Spotlight targeted each of the clones, shooting until they were eradicated. Taylor formed more, and when a beam of light was insufficient to disperse one, Spotlight flew through it bodily, blasting ahead of herself as she went.

This was the opportunity Taylor needed. She positioned a series of clones, drawing Spotlight further and further away, closer to the Merchants. All of the Merchants who had guns fired them, and two more of her arms were disabled by bullets. Every little bit helped, but for the volume of ammunition they were using, Taylor was really disappointed with their aim.

She formed one more bug clone, larger than the others. Spotlight rushed to attack it, bringing five arms together to blast it apart, then flying through the space it had been, right into the largest spinning helicopter blade on the Merchant craft.

There was nothing left of what had once been Purity, but her final attacks had destroyed much of the airship the Merchants were riding. The structure groaned, blades spun off of their rotors, and the whole thing came apart in the air.

Trainwreck landed with a clang. Whirlygig’s power caught Whizzer and a dozen normals as they fell, spinning them around her along with debris from the ruined ship. They landed hard, but not hard enough to be injured, which was more than could be said for the Merchants she hadn’t caught.

Whizzer appeared in front of Taylor.

“What the hell was that? You just tried to kill us!”

“No. I killed Spotlight.”

“By aiming her at _us_! What about the Truce? I heard that the Undersiders played fast and loose with the rules, but Hookwolf was right. You’re aiming the Nine at the other gangs!”

“That’s not what this was.”

“Yeah? Well…”

“Shut up!” Rachel’s face was screwed up in a concentration of effort.

“Bitch?” Taylor asked.

“I’m gonna save them. Just need a minute.”

“Wait, you’re still trying to save those things?” asked Whizzer.

Whirlygig was approaching behind him and overheard. “Are you insane? Those are Bonesaw’s puppets now. You saw what she did with Purity. We should kill them before they can do whatever she made them for!”

Like hell was Taylor going to let anyone kill Lisa.

“Rachel?” she asked.

“Yes.” Rachel knew what she meant.

“Well, good,” sighed Whirlygig. “I’m glad you agree. You looked like you were gearing up to fight us over it. Now, you said something about poison that would…”

She was interrupted by a sound of shattering glass from Schrodinger’s Box. A green cloud filled the space that remained on both sides, but there was precious little of that because both Cerberus and Lassie were already triple their original size, Rachel’s power forcing them to grow far faster than Taylor had ever seen before. Rachel’s face looked strained, but she didn’t stop, and the dogs kept growing. In only a few seconds they were pressed up against the roof of the box, sounds of straining metal reaching the watchers.

“Oh, shit!” said Whirlygig. “Why?!” Her power spun up, starting to create a dust devil around her. Trainwreck started to charge towards them.

The lid of the box sprung open, and the wind whipped up by Whirlygig dispersed the cloud of poison as it spilled out. Both of Bonesaw’s creations were struggling to breathe, but Rachel poured her power into them even more, and as they topped out at ten feet tall, Taylor could see the healing effect help them start to recover. She jumped up and used the horns of bone protruding from Lisa’s side to scramble up onto her back. Rachel mounted Cerberus, commanding Roxy’s head to pick up Ink’s normal body in her mouth. Brian cursed but climbed up on Magic.

They turned and ran for the Trainyards, Socks running along beside them. Lisa’s human arms had become much more paw-like under Rachel’s power, but she was still able to use one of them to backhand Trainwreck away when he got too close. There was a sustained pursuit, of course—you couldn’t expect less from a teleporter—but that was a problem bugs could solve. No mere Merchants were going to get in Taylor’s way over this.


	29. Topsy-Turvy 4.2

Charlotte was drowning again, but this time the ocean pouring down her throat was caustic instead of briny. Her lungs filled with ammonia, and she tried to force it up, but Leviathan was in the shelter with her, and any of the fluid that she coughed out her mouth flowed straight back into her nose with a burning sensation that cauterized her sense of smell.

Leviathan was laughing at her, and the cape that came up behind the Endbringer grabbed a blade out of its tail. It was Hack Job, and he teleported to her swinging the axe that dissolved into ash just before it would have cloven through her chest.

It was just a slower death, though, because the ash mixed with the flood that was filling her lungs, and now she was breathing but everything was persimmon and sin and simmering cinnamon and the heroes still hadn’t come, wouldn’t come.

Leviathan stepped closer, sprouting blades from its skin, extruding Hookwolf from one arm, Kaiser from the other.

“Which daughter are you, then?” asked Kaiser. “How do you destroy tradition?”

“Do you fancy yourself a Hodel?” asked Hookwolf, stalking forward. “Interested in learning and moving on from quaint little Brockton Bay?”

Charlotte scrambled away, her hands and legs sinking in the mud that slipped and slid with her every move.

“No,” said Kaiser. “Not her. Nor the other two that everyone remembers. [Tevye](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tevye) had seven daughters, you know. His oldest three broke his heart, but his death? That came later, after the family fled Anatevka. So, should we blame Bielke for driving him to his grave? Or maybe Taybele, who didn’t get a role in the musical?”

Charlotte turned to run, but Hookwolf was there to block her way.

Kaiser spoke from behind her. “I think you might be the one that never even got a name, not worth mentioning in the book. Are you the last and worst of Tevye’s daughters?”

“Tell me,” Hookwolf sneered. “Did your father want to be a rich man?”

His legs speared forward, pressing her back beneath the surface of the warm mud and flesh that sucked her inside and surrounded her with an ammonia paste and she could hear the collapse of Keesha’s apartment under Purity’s beams. There wasn’t time for a scream, or if there were, it wasn’t audible above the crush of stone and steel, of the angry cape who declared, “You will all die because for once it is _my_ family that is threatened.”

And the heroes didn’t come, and she was drowning.

///-///-///

Charlotte glared at the webbing between her fingers, the ugly tumors on her wrists and forearms. She tried to huff in disgust, but something about the way her nose was shaped diverted the airflow and it came out as a choking sound instead. She limped over to Noelle, knowing Mother would give her a ride to wherever they were going.

As she touched one of the carapaced tentacles to climb up onto Noelle’s back, her senses expanded. She could feel _everything_ that Noelle’s power was doing. It was keeping those three captives alive and suppressing the power of the one that had to be Bouquet. Charlotte thought about withdrawing that life-sustaining effect from Bouquet and just letting Noelle eat the bitch for real, but she could also feel the way Bouquet was thrashing under the terror that Noelle’s power was inducing in her captives, and that was better than simply ending her.

Noelle’s power was also busy forming more bodies, copying her captives with varying degrees of accuracy. On a whim she forced it to begin forming a new copy of one of the unpowered captives, then eject it almost immediately. The figure was emaciated, fragile; there was no ribcage yet, and its skin burst open when it hit the ground.

“Hey!” said Noelle, turning to look at Charlotte. “None of that!” One of Noelle’s mouths snapped up the struggling body, swallowing it down, and Charlotte felt the way her power used the ingested flesh to grow: a slight lengthening of the muzzle of the wolf head, and some added muscle on a hoofed leg.

Charlotte grunted an affirmative and curled up on Noelle’s back in the fleshy nest where all the tentacles emerged. A few wrapped around to anchor her in place.

As Noelle walked, Charlotte played at directing the body’s growth. She couldn’t do much, since Noelle was only absorbing a little mass as she walked. Mostly bugs and grass. Occasionally there were some stray pets to eat, or a flock of birds nesting in a tree, and Charlotte had more to work with. She made it create eyes where there weren’t any yet, and add sharp tips to the ends of tentacles. Noelle didn’t seem to notice or care, so with every organism absorbed, Charlotte pushed Mother’s power to make her stronger, tougher, more capable. Or just more interesting.

After paying attention for long enough, she could even feel the way the power was instilling hunger into Mother’s mind, the desire to eat and be filled. She nudged it slightly, increasing that _need_ the tiniest bit, then the tiniest bit more. Noelle’s pace quickened, and Charlotte smiled. The more Mother ate, the more Charlotte would be able to help her body to grow.

///-///-///

Being a clone was less disorienting than Charlotte had expected. It was awful and disgusting, but she knew exactly who and where she was. Her body was fat and gross and short, exactly like _hers_. Charlotte had seen the way some of Noelle’s other children were adjusted, allowed to be different from their original, but not Charlotte. The only thing more disgusting would be if she were the original instead of the clone.

She threw up a bit, just imagining it. To come into being thinking _you_ were the reason that you were vile and hateful and horrid, not just cursed by the revolting person you’d been copied from.

She watched her Mother’s silhouette move at a trot down the wide boulevard. Maybe she’d catch up later. Right now she needed something to cover up her inherited ugliness. Thank God nobody was around. Even in the late dusk, there was enough light that people would be able to see her clearly. That would _not_ happen until she got clothes.

The flooded-out strip mall on this road had three restaurants, a furniture consignment store, and a salon. The only useful things she found were a cook’s apron hung in the pizza place, and one of those draping sheets with a head-hole that hair stylists put on their customers. It was not nearly enough, but it was far better than nothing.

On the next block she found a storage unit that had been broken open and looted already, but there were things nobody had bothered to take. A moldy winter coat was one of these. It felt gross under her hands, and she was glad that she couldn’t smell it, but she put it on over the salon sheet. It was puffy and two sizes too large for her, making it all the better to conceal her horrid body.

She also found a child’s pillowcase with a pair of cartoon characters on it. It looked clean enough, so she ripped some eyeholes in it and slid it over her head. Now nobody could see how ugly she was.

Charlotte paused. Should she actually cover her face? She wasn’t wearing it to hide her identity, but that’s what people would assume. It would draw attention to her as a cape. And if she was going to get involved in cape stuff, it might be better to go unmasked so that anyone she pissed off would target _her_. And maybe her family, too.

A grin slowly formed on Charlotte’s face. She’d keep the pillowcase, but it wouldn’t be hard to get “accidentally” unmasked if there was a fight.

With the essentials taken care of, Charlotte also grabbed a fire poker to use as a weapon, and a pair of flip-flops. They were a little too tight for her feet, but the pinching was better than being barefoot, so she wore them anyway.

She left in what she was pretty sure was the direction Mother had gone. Roughly.

As she walked, she started to plan. Step one, don’t be a nudist, was taken care of. She’d need to revisit that later and get something better than she was wearing now. Step two was find a way to pay back original Charlotte for the awful identity she’d inherited. The obvious thing to do would be to impersonate the girl and do something to her friends and family, or sabotage her future with the Protectorate. Unfortunately, even for the people who weren’t already aware that she’d been taken by Noelle, those ideas all depended on Charlotte’s willingness to step any further into the life of that waste of space, and it simply wasn’t worth it. If that’s what it took, then letting her predecessor continue to screw up her own life would have to suffice.

Step three, then, was to choose where to go. No reason to stay in Brockton Bay; added distance from the shitheap that had spawned the Raimi family could only be a good thing, and it wasn’t like Mother needed her; if she did need Charlotte’s power for some reason, Noelle just could grow another copy. So, Boston to start? It was a transit hub, and would be close enough to get to easily. She’d have time to think more on the way.

Plan in place, Charlotte walked toward the interstate. Most who were going to leave had already fled the city in the wake of Leviathan, but more would still have chosen to run from the Slaughterhouse Nine after Shatterbird announced their presence. There were also people who had been trickling into the city to see if they could reclaim anything from their damaged homes before leaving for elsewhere, so there were bound to be rides available to take her away from here.

She hadn’t gone far before a strong scent of spearmint passed overhead, causing her to look up. The spearmint had passed over a rooftop already, but a moment later it was followed by an odd pairing of Nutella and muenster cheese, flying on a slab of concrete. A short distance away, a whirling blender of coconut curry barreled through an intersection, running in the same direction.

Huh. She hadn’t considered that option. Step two might be workable, if she could aim the Empire capes at her original.

Charlotte turned and jogged after the fading scents. Hookwolf’s passage was obvious enough, she didn’t need her cape sense to track them.

She heard the capes long before she reached them, metal clanging off metal in a way that reminded her of those living history blacksmith shops, turned up to eleven. When she came around the last corner and saw the ongoing fight, though, she was stunned. Chains and hooks whirled and clashed, blades striking with lightning speed to pin an opponent in place, only for them to wriggle and twist out of the way, or else outright deflect the blows off of polished white orbs.

It was like someone had built a sewing machine out of chainsaws. Charlotte honestly couldn’t tell where Mannequin stopped and Hookwolf began. The mass of metal passed over a severed leg on the ground, which sprouted a nozzle and sprayed fine droplets in the air. Charlotte could hear them sizzle as some of Hookwolf’s mass visibly corroded away in great chunks of rust.

A chain shot out and struck the leg, forcing it to skitter away on the cracked asphalt. Charlotte assumed that was Hookwolf’s counterattack until the chain retracted, swinging the leg through the air to strike at Hookwolf’s center mass with enough force to launch him several feet. Then the leg reconnected with Mannequin’s torso and he leapt free, spinning through a backflip to land a short distance away.

His jaw opened, and he mimed a laugh.

Immediately, a streak of flame tore through the air from above, and an explosion rocked Mannequin backward, tumbling him to the ground in a loose pile of parts. Hookwolf had recovered by now enough to pounce on him, and the whirling dance resumed.

“Hey!” Looking up, Charlotte saw Othala leaning over the edge of Rune’s platform. “You here to help, or you just gonna gawk?”

“I was looking for you guys. Bring me up there, and I’ll help.”

Othala said something to Rune, and a moment later a manhole cover dropped to the ground. When Charlotte stepped on it, it lurched into motion and lifted her up to the larger platform. She stepped off, and Rune turned her attention back to the fight, shooting flames from her fingertips and launching the manhole cover and other projectiles at Mannequin.

Othala looked at her with obvious disgust. “You’re one of those new Merchant scum, I guess? What can you do?”

“Not a Merchant. Just couldn’t find anything else to wear.”

“Don’t care. What’s your power? You a Blaster?”

Charlotte shook her head, then reached up to adjust her pillowcase when it blocked her vision. “No. I’m a power booster. I’m willing to help, but I have conditions.”

“Conditions, against the Nine? What the hell is wrong with you!?”

Rune interrupted to hold out her hand. “Top me up?”

Othala grasped Rune’s outstretched fingers, and a flow of Nutella spread itself more thickly over the cheese scent she was already exuding. Intense flames burst from her hands and shot down to crackle around Mannequin. Charlotte didn’t think it was doing very much.

“Nothing big,” she said when Othala looked at her again. “There’s this Jewish family that needs some special attention. I hear you’re the people to talk to about that.”

“Sure. If you want to support the cause, that’s fine and whatever, but why are you talking about that now instead of fighting? Don’t answer that, just _help_.”

Charlotte nodded and reached for Othala’s hand.

“What are you…” Othala cut herself off when they made contact, the thick Nutella scent deepening and flowing more freely. “Oh. That’s different.”

The scent on Rune intensified, and the flames in her hands winked out. Then they were back.

Nutella flowed up Charlotte’s arm, and she felt a new weightlessness. She lifted into the air to hover over the platform slightly until the Nutella scent shifted, and she dropped back onto her feet. This time, everything around her slowed down, and she watched Othala blink at far less than the normal speed. She looked around, then reached out to grab a passing fly out of the air, catching and crushing it easily. Neat.

The smell shifted again, and the world caught up to her. Othala wore a smirk.

“Hook!” she called. “Tag me!”

Hookwolf broke away from Mannequin, leaping high towards the platform. He only made it about halfway up, but he produced a long blade from one paw that extended nearly the rest of the distance. Rune lowered the platform a couple feet to make up the difference, and when Othala touched his metal her Nutella scent flowed down onto him.

Hookwolf shot back toward Mannequin at super speed, his fast, powerful strikes clearly giving him the upper hand now. Mannequin countered with another spray of that corrosive spray, but Othala was ready. She switched out Hookwolf’s granted power from speed to invulnerability before he lost too many blades, and Hookwolf managed to continue grappling with Mannequin when the tinker tried to make distance between them.

Rune looked awed, still contributing a rain of fire where she thought it might help. “That’s some boost. What can you do now?”

“It’s still one power per person, and one person per power, but the big thing is I can empower multiple people at once. And, once I’ve tagged someone, I can switch out what I’ve given them as long as my boost remains active.” Othala turned her attention to Charlotte. “I still hate you for trying to bargain over the people who killed my husband, but you just bought yourself an errand from the Empire. Well, the Chosen, now.”

“Good.”

An explosion distracted Charlotte, and she saw Hookwolf and Mannequin flung yards apart. Mannequin dashed into an alley and didn’t reappear. Hookwolf, obviously unharmed through the granted invulnerability, chased after him, accelerating halfway there as Othala switched him to speed again. As soon as he was out of sight, a hint of spearmint approached, and Charlotte looked down to see one of Mannequin’s hands flying toward them on the end of a long chain.

She shouted, “Look out!” and the platform started to move just before a gunshot sounded, and Charlotte collapsed. Her leg felt like it was on fire, and she could see her blood welling out in a puddle that dripped over the edge of the platform.

Nutella scent again, and her bleeding slowed to a trickle, then stopped. The pain faded, and she refocused on her surroundings.

“You’ll be okay,” said Othala. “But it takes a while to regenerate from something like that.”

“Okay,” she answered. “Hurts less. Thanks.” It made tactical sense to heal the force multiplying Trump, but it still surprised her on a deep level that someone would actually try to help someone as worthless as her.

Charlotte looked at the fight in time to see Mannequin disappear down a manhole. Hookwolf was too large to give chase.

“We didn’t get him, but we drove him off,” said Rune. “Next time we’ll be ready.”

Othala was still looking at Charlotte. “That’s a hell of an ability you’ve got. We’ll get you healed, and we’ll get you some real clothes so you don’t look like a degenerate, and then we’ll talk about your future in the Chosen.”


	30. Topsy-Turvy 4.3

Cherie sat in the park, idly swinging back and forth as she listened to the music of the city. The orchestra of fear and despair was delicious, but far more subdued than she would have expected. Shatterbird had a much stronger effect in the other two places they’d hit since she joined the Nine. Part of it she attributed to the numbness that came from the recent Endbringer attack—people acclimatized quickly to all sorts of things, and emotions tended to be about change. If things were already terrible, more bad news didn’t have as much of an effect. Unless someone was close to their limit already, of course. Cherie could hear those people scattered through the city, their stress and worry and even panic an out-of-control accelerando about to break strings.

The authorities felt more confident, as well. After averting so many deaths and injuries due to Jack’s idiocy of telling them when Shatterbird was going to sing, they thought things were under control. Cherie smirked. The hotspots of trumpeting terror, the cymbal clashes of anger and desperation told her differently as she tracked the ongoing fights.

“Push me,” she ordered, adding a glissando of compliance to her invisible minion’s mind, and the swing gained height. It was getting harder and harder to control the girl. She’d gone for full domination of her emotions right from the start and hadn’t bothered much with subtlety. She’d expected to be able to use her against the Nine right away, not have to flee from Jack and Riley. Now, after almost three days of constant control, the girl was getting dangerously close to immune. One more day, two at a stretch, and she’d have to dispose of her. She could hear the swelling notes of hatred building hour by hour, out of her reach to change. Still, nothing to worry about yet. Cherie was _good_ at this. She had practice manipulating her family, after all, and most of them had grown largely immune to her power before long.

As she swung back and forth, she supplemented the submissiveness she was playing in her minion’s mind with alternating notes of fear and devotion, in rhythm with her own movement towards and away from where the girl stood pushing her. It was inelegant and blatant, but even if the girl knew that the feelings were a Master effect, emotions weren’t easily reasoned around. She’d be able to keep the girl conditioned for a while, even when she was almost entirely immune.

Cherie laughed aloud when she realized the pun she’d created for herself. Alec would have said something about mood swings, if he were here. Cherie felt another burst of triumph at having taken this toy from him. He’d somehow taken full body control of a cape who made it impossible for most people to remember her, and Cherie had heard the attachment in his emotions, muted though it was. She hoped that he would remember the girl after Cherie killed her. Even if he escaped the Nine, which was unlikely, she’d have gotten her revenge.

“It’s getting close to time,” she said to her invisible minion. “The fight is moving our way. Follow.” She stood from the swing and strolled away from the park.

She was going to kill Jack. He thought he could play her, string her along as entertainment? He thought he could see through her secrets? Well, she had seen through some of his. She’d prove that she wasn’t just a silly girl to toy with.

First, though, there was something interesting that she needed to investigate. There was a note in the orchestra that was spreading, imprinting itself on new minds with a degree of exactness that was unlike anything she’d heard before. An oboe, playing a mournful dirge over and over. Emotions were roughly similar from person to person, but the notes were always unique, their blend of melodies and harmonies melding into something far more unique than a fingerprint. Yet here were dozens of individuals with that same dirge of self-loathing dominating their whole symphony. It was the strangest Master effect she’d ever observed, and after growing up in the Vasil household that was saying something.

One of the Master victims had wandered in Cherie’s direction, and she only had to walk a short distance to bring them inside her range of influence. As soon as she was close enough, before she could even see them, she started playing with what she found in their mind.

It was strange. Half of the woman’s mind was fully manipulable. Cherie could inject fear or joy or hate or devotion or apathy, or any mix of them that she wanted. She played each one across the woman, a virtuoso tuning her instrument and testing its range. But no matter what music she imposed on the half of the woman’s mind that she could reach, that oboe kept droning on. This woman had somehow been hard-wired to hate herself, a physical permanence to the emotion that put it beyond Cherie’s reach. Behind it, there was a chime of loyalty to the cape that had Mastered her, which was also beyond Cherie’s influence.

Cherie walked through the open door of the clothing store the woman was inside, finding a dumpy figure collapsed on the floor weeping in the despair and confusion that Cherie was playing through her. She stilled the music, erasing everything except for that dirge and the relentless chime.

The woman wiped her eyes and sat up. “Cherish? Oh. That makes more sense. I thought I was just being moody.”

Cherie blinked. The woman recognized her? She released her muting and examined the natural orchestra of the woman’s emotions. Now that she looked behind the Master effect that had captured her attention before, she saw that it was one of the capes from that disastrous meeting with Alec in the parking deck.

“Shit, girl. You got whammied hard.”

The cape shrugged, her oboe dirge swelling in an even greater crescendo. “I probably deserve it anyway.”

Cherie didn’t know what the woman’s power was, but having another powered minion wouldn’t hurt. She reached in and tried to adjust that percussive chime of loyalty to focus on her instead of the original Master, but it wouldn’t budge under her touch. That was unfortunate. She’d have to go with something more direct.

Cherie found the chords that were associated with herself and changed them to a strum of trust and a descant of familial devotion. “Here,” she said, offering her hand. “Come with me.”

The cape nodded and used Cherie’s arm to lever herself to her feet. As soon as their hands touched, Cherie felt the change. The music gained a resonance that she hadn’t noticed before, and she instinctively reinforced the changes she’d made to her new acquisition. It was like using the sustain pedal on a piano--the notes she’d inserted into the cape’s orchestra gained permanence, sounding even when Cherie didn’t force them to play.

She smiled a smile that was wider and more genuine than she’d had in years.

Her disadvantage had always been the transient nature of her power. Daddy had been the one with the power to permanently adjust people, but now… now she could be stronger than him. Daddy could only change the way people felt about _him_ , but Cherie’s power let her control their emotions toward anyone, even themselves. If this cape let her make those changes last, she could do _anything_.

“What’s your name?” she asked her new slave.

“Charlotte.”

Cherie didn’t need the Nine or anyone else to protect her, there was no more need for a long con. With Charlotte, she could beat Daddy at his own game. She gripped Charlotte’s hands and spun her around in celebration, grin wide. This changed everything!

A fanfare surprised her, and she realized that for the first time she could hear her own orchestra.

There would be time to explore that later. Cherie turned her attention to the other minion in the room, flooding the girl’s mind with as much devotion and trust as she could, then imbuing it with that sustain effect.

It was insufficient. She could tell right away that the girl was too immune for adoration. She wouldn’t get another willing slave out of her. But… there were other ways to keep control. She removed her changes, replacing them with lasting trepidation and awe.

The classic question of whether it was better to be loved or feared ignored the option of “both.” It would be nice to have a terrified slave who always knew to fear her wrath, to contrast with her devoted slave. Variety was the spice of life, after all. These two would be the perfect start of her own expanding domain, which would grow larger and stronger and subsume the stunted kingdom Daddy prized so much.

Hand in hand with her newest thrall, and with her control reinforced over the invisible one, she started skipping toward the fight where she could hear Jack and Crawler’s music. She would kill Jack before she left. He was vindictive, and she didn’t need to be looking over her shoulder waiting for Jack to try to take revenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With this chapter, AO3 is now caught up to the versions posted on the SpaceBattles and Sufficient Velocity forums. Recent updates have been arriving about once per week, but there is no set update schedule. Thank you for reading!


	31. Topsy-Turvy 4.4

Crawler was difficult to see with his oily black coloring, but his orchestra was clear—anticipatory and happy—so Cherie was able to track him well enough despite the fading dark of pre-dawn. His scales and armor were glossy rather than matte, reflecting much of the light that hit them.

He was prowling back and forth in front of an indistinct figure that Cherie couldn’t see well, but who appeared to be about half Crawler’s size and somehow more disgustingly mutated than his own freakish shape. At least Crawler was symmetrical and had body parts that connected in a way that made sense. Like having only one head, for example. The buried girl, as Cherie had named her, looked more like Pablo Picasso had painted a menagerie with the same famous aesthetic he gave to portraits.

Cherie couldn’t hear what they were saying. She had found a relatively safe vantage for herself and her thralls to watch from while they waited for a chance to go after Jack. They were crouched behind a guardrail on top of an overpass where flotsam from Leviathan’s attack had been shoved out of the way. It was elevated and provided good sightlines, but there was also enough junk that they wouldn’t obviously skyline themselves to any watchers even if they became backlit.

She had tried to go after Jack directly. It was a simple plan: get close enough to send her invisible slave after him, and she’d be able to take him out before he knew they were there. Unfortunately, she was having terrible luck approaching him stealthily. Every time she’d tried to maneuver closer to him, either Jack or Crawler had chased down a bystander or chosen a new direction that somehow resulted in Crawler remaining between Cherie and her quarry. If she hadn’t known better thanks to monitoring their emotions, she’d have thought they were deliberately countering her movements.

Cherie’s impatience betrayed itself simultaneously with a tapping of her fingers and with the syncopated  percussion  she could now hear in her own emotional orchestra. Listening to her own music wasn’t particularly distracting, but it made it impossible to ignore emotions she’d gotten very skilled at suppressing. She couldn’t lie to herself anymore about being fearless. That viola screech was a near-constant dissonance, growing louder whenever she contemplated her upcoming attack on the leader of the Nine.

Whatever conversation they were having finally ended, and Crawler’s anticipation spiked as he lunged forward. His mouth clamped down on the buried girl’s central head, ripping it clean off. Instead of following up on his attack, he backed away and watched as the head regrew.

Her regeneration was slower than Crawler’s, but still impressive. Within fifteen seconds or so her head had reformed. No sooner had she recovered than Crawler attacked again, biting off the other two heads in quick succession, then raking his massive claws through most of the legs on her left side. She collapsed into a screaming, roaring heap, and Crawler backed off again as flesh bubbled out to refill her wounds.

… and bubbled.

And continued bubbling long past the point where she would have regrown her mass. The two bulging tumors grew and grew, soon joined by more, each of which swelled to dwarf the buried girl they were growing from. The largest distorted from formless flesh, filling out into a recognizable silhouette that clawed its way free from the buried girl. On the opposite side a second duplicate of Crawler tore out of her skin, though this one glowed with green bioluminescence and had eight legs instead of six. One by one the additional tumors distended and spilled into being as more warped clones, not that their mutations seemed significant when compared to what Crawler had already become.

The sight of Crawler’s joyful charge against his five doppelgangers would have been riveting to anyone else—and indeed, Jack had approached to see the battle up close—but Cherie was captivated by the orchestras that sprang into existence as each clone appeared. They were near duplicates of Crawler’s own music, with just enough variation to make them distinct individuals. However, droning through the emotional mixture was that same mournful  oboe dirge  of self-loathing that Cherie had been tracking as it spread through the city.

The buried girl had it as well, but in contrast to all of the others, her orchestra was lacking that  chime of loyalty . Cherie had assumed that the buried girl was just another victim because she had that signature self-hate, but no. She was the  _ Master _ .

Focusing on the girl’s music, Cherie listened to the notes that fought with each other. Her dirge was even stronger than in those she had Mastered. Moreover, where it was an overlay in the minds of the clones, in the buried girl it was an integral part of her symphony, interacting organically with everything else. More than anything, it seemed to be tied to her sense of restraint, caution, and fear.

That wouldn’t do. The girl was holding back, even with Jack right in front of her. Cherie could tell that she was somehow aware of his presence. Her hate for him was blaring along their connection, but it was fighting with her fear of herself, and she wasn’t moving to attack.

Cherie had seen this before. It was Jack’s secret, the reason he’d been able to survive for so long. Cherie had noticed it easily, though it was subtle enough that it had taken a few weeks with the Nine before she’d been able to figure out the specifics. When people attacked Jack, they almost always had a tiny surge of hesitation, doubt, and fear. They didn’t even notice they were being Mastered because  _ of course _ you would feel fear when facing the infamous Slaughterhouse Nine. The timing, though, was a sure giveaway. Every time they were in a position to actually harm Jack, those emotions would swell or spike.

Sometimes Jack took advantage by killing them, or by retreating. Other times he would capitalize on the moment to start talking and bluff his way out of trouble. It didn’t matter if it was a doomed hero or another member of the Nine, the effect was the same. But Cherie had figured it out. She knew that Jack had some sort of Master aura or Stranger effect that made people lose confidence and be overcautious. She never heard any emotion from him when that happened to make her think that it was intentional on his part, and she suspected that he didn’t even know he was doing it. If she could get close enough, she could override that subconscious hesitation and send a capable opponent straight at him. He wasn’t actually a good fighter. Without his hidden advantage, he would go down easily.

Cherie stood up.

“Come,” she ordered her thralls. “We’re going to kill a smug bastard.”

She watched the ongoing fight as they walked off the overpass. Two of the clones were dead, which she’d expected from the way their music had cut off. One had a hole through its chest that looked to have been eaten away by acid, the other was little more than a scattered collection of dismembered limbs.

Of the three that remained, one that looked identical to Crawler was exuding intense frustration, seemingly unable to do any damage to his original. There were puddles of acid eating through the ground all around them, and as she watched, another glob of spittle splashed harmlessly off of Crawler’s scales.

The bioluminescent clone had sprouted glowing orange scythe-like blades from its second set of limbs and was using them to slice through Crawler’s armor. Wherever they struck, Crawler’s wounds persisted. Somehow they were negating or bypassing his regeneration. Not completely, since some of the wounds were slowly shrinking, but the effect was a dramatic contrast to what usually happened when something managed to damage Crawler. Unfortunately, that clone was more fragile than Crawler, and a swipe of his claws shattered the bones in its shoulders.

Crawler let it live, exulting in the pain and the way his body was strengthening. He turned to face the third clone, which was small and lithe. It easily avoided his attempt to engage, dancing around his strikes and weaving past splashes of acid. The strange thing was that it didn’t seem to be moving all that quickly. In fact, Cherie realized, it wasn’t moving so much as  _ growing  _ in new directions, its legs disappearing when they pushed off something, reabsorbed into its body as a new leg sprouted from the front.

She turned her attention to the buried girl who was— Cherie did a double take. She was  _ eating _ the dead Crawler clones. Her four mouths tore into the bodies, ripping through muscle and bone. The armor pieces that were too tough to bite were swallowed anyway; those that were too large to swallow were somehow absorbed through her skin, which made Cherie wonder what the point of eating was. The girl was radiating relief and satisfaction, gorging herself as though this were the first time she’d eaten in years.

That very well could have been true, Cherie thought, because with every bite she took the girl seemed to grow larger. Each new bulge of flesh, each additional pound spurred a new crescendo of disgust and loathing in her oboe chorus, but she seemed too famished to stop herself. Though she had started a bit less than half Crawler’s size, she was now noticeably larger than him.

In one way, that made sense, if she’d eaten large parts of two copies of him. In another, it made no sense at all. Her power apparently created new mass to regenerate her injuries and to form new clones, so why the hell would her physical size be linked to what she ate? Not that Cherie cared. She just wanted to get close enough to aim the girl at Jack.

As Cherie watched, a bulge of flesh on the girl’s side thickened and elongated, resolving into a new head that resembled a panther’s, except that it contained multiple rows of triangular shark-like teeth. It also sprouted a long prehensile tongue that quickly started tugging pieces of the nearest corpse into its mouth. Underneath the body, a new pair of limbs were steadily bulking up with more and more muscle, folding into the kind of legs one saw on jumping animals like rabbits or kangaroos. She’d thought that the drastic increase in size might hamper the girl’s mobility, but that didn’t appear to be likely.

A foghorn-deep scream of pain brought Cherie’s attention back to the Crawlers. The small lithe one was impaled on the scythes of the other clone, writhing and twitching. Crawler seemed to have baited them into each other’s way, giving himself time to heal and adapt to whatever new attack his duplicate had formed.

Its unnatural growth apparently negated, the smaller clone shrieked again as blue lights played across its skin from the scythes. The larger one shook its legs to dislodge the twitching body, which rolled to a stop at the feet of the buried girl. Her wolf head sniffed at it briefly, then she tore into it with her many mouths. Its unnervingly low-pitched scream resumed as Cherie and her slaves passed behind a large building and out of sight.

Halfway to the next alley, a flash of actinic light cast shadows against nearby buildings, accompanied by a fanfare of masochistic trumpets from the original Crawler. A second flash quickly followed, and his music shifted to concern and disappointment. Cherie guessed he wasn’t adapting quickly enough, because his symphony gained the  syncopated  percussion of impatience and bolted away down the road. The two remaining clones gave chase.

The buried girl was washed with indecision, but before she could decide whether to follow or not, Jack stepped from his cover and started to talk. At least, that’s what Cherie surmised from the sudden attention the girl displayed, and the doubt that crept into her mind.

This was her chance! She just had to get into manipulation range. Cherie broke into a silent run, practically towing Charlotte behind her.

But was this actually a good idea? Attacking Jack like this? In time with the thoughts, Cherie heard a  tremolo of  doubt enter her own orchestra. No! She would not let Jack’s Master effect stop her. Emotions were  _ her _ domain.

She silenced the  tremolo, changing it to a confident trill .

She’d never been able to affect herself before, but now that she could hear her own music, it seemed she could alter it too. Thanks to Charlotte, she could counter anything that Jack tried to pull. As her caution swelled again, she suppressed it, bolstering her confidence instead. What was there to be worried about? Why  _ not  _ modify her own moods? She had years of experience and practice on the minds of others. She  _ had _ this!

Cherie and Charlotte stepped out onto the main road, just as a surge of angry emotion came from a figure sitting on the girl’s back. They hadn’t done anything yet, so Cherie had discounted their presence. Now whatever they did flooded the buried girl with aggression, and she suddenly charged towards Jack, reaching out a long tentacle to grab him.

Jack’s surprise was evident to Cherie, of course, but he merely danced to the side, slicing the tentacle with a lazy swing of his knife and slapping the tip of it away with his hand when it passed near his head. His hand seemed to stick for a moment, but another quick motion with his blade severed the tentacle’s end and he shook it away from himself. The next swing threaded between the mass of tentacles and silenced the music of the figure on the girl’s back. Cherie never saw the body, it was simply absorbed again into the flesh that had spawned it.

Doubt formed in the girl’s mind, and Cherie was too far away to fix it! She crept forward, and as her confidence waned she reinforced it, removing more of the caution that Jack was trying to push at her. Accelerating to a jog, she was finally able to hear what Jack was saying.

“…named you, Miss Meinhardt? Echidna. And my word, isn’t it appropriate! The mother of all monsters, birthing abominations while remaining the most monstrous of them all. It’s inspiring, really.”

With every word, her self-loathing flared, and the more he called her a monster the more she struggled against the rage and aggression that were urging her forward.

“And you touched me just now,” continued Jack. “Shall we see what a twisted version of me looks like?”

With perfect timing, Echidna’s central mouth spewed a fountain of vomit, from which leapt a naked man.

The clone of Jack looked at his original for a long moment, then scoffed and turned his back.

“Now is that any way to treat your better half?” teased Jack. “I ought to…” he cut off at the sound of rapidly approaching sirens. “Well, that’s unfortunate. Think on what I’ve said, and bring my double with you next time we meet.” He ducked through a doorway and Cherie tracked his rapid retreat as she finally got in range of Echidna. She didn’t need long. She reached out and strangled the entire oboe section of self-loathing, replacing it with an overwhelmingly profound acceptance aimed at everything about herself. Then, she imbued that new  leitmotif with the fermata of a lifetime, conducting it permanently.

Jack wanted a hesitant, easily controlled monster? Cherie would give him one who was not conflicted about herself. She laughed aloud and threw both hands into the air, spinning away from Charlotte and exulting in her foregone victory. Nothing could stop her now.

That was when something tangled her feet and shoved her from behind, and she belatedly noticed the swell of hate overriding her invisible slave’s fear. Charlotte stepped closer to catch her, but a dark-skinned girl suddenly appeared at Charlotte’s side and held her back. Cherie had time to recognize the no-longer-invisible girl before she hit the ground, and then her hands erupted in pain and a scream tore from her throat. 

Shoving herself to the side, Cherie realized that she had somehow been so incautious as to run right up to the edge of a wide puddle of Crawler’s acid. She had avoided face-planting in the deadly liquid by inches.

The pain had quickly disappeared, but she screamed again as she watched the flesh of her hands dissolve, leaving behind only Bonesaw’s reinforcing mesh. The bones melted next, dripping burning acid down her forearms, and finally the subdermal mesh degraded, flaking into pieces that shrank as they drifted through the air.

A sharp kick to the back of Cherie’s head rolled her directly into the puddle, and within seconds she was no longer able to scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we have Cherish showing off the critical thinking skills that led her to join the S9 in the first place. Personally, “Maybe they’ve just never encountered a Master in the past twenty years” seems like a poorly reasoned plan. 
> 
> Thanks to Juff for helping to edit this chapter. At his suggestion I’ve improved my descriptions of Cherish’s power. I’ve gone back and slightly edited the previous chapter to make it consistent.


	32. Topsy-Turvy 4.5

Standing from the puddle of fluid, Charlotte found herself severely disoriented. Contrary to her expectations, that disorientation had nothing to do with being a clone, which was in fact a surprisingly pleasant experience. Rather, the disorientation came from suddenly finding herself surrounded by shouting and screaming and gunfire, yet being unable to really see what was going on. The rising sun had cleared the rooftops and glinted on the thousand-thousand facets of a carpet of shattered glass. Nearly any direction Charlotte looked, she was forced to squint and rely on silhouettes to identify the sources of the sounds she heard.

Mother’s titanic figure was one exception, the ground actually shaking with the impact when she was thrown onto her back by a giantess in steel armor, nearly knocking Charlotte off her feet. Menja charged forward and impaled Noelle with her spear before she could right herself, driving the point entirely through her central body and into the ground. With Noelle immobilized, Menja used both hands to bring her sister’s shield down in an overhead swing that completely severed two of Noelle’s beastly heads. She panted from the effort, resting her hands on her knees, and was taken by surprise when the thickest of Noelle’s tentacles wrapped around her neck and yanked her off balance, several others ensnaring her waist and elbows.

Menja was huge, at least thirty feet tall in her giant form, but Noelle was far larger than she had been the last time Charlotte had seen her, somewhere close to fifteen feet high at the shoulder. (And wow, that was a lot of shoulders—how many legs did she have now!?) Noelle was also a good twenty-five feet long, even before taking into account the massive reach of her many tentacles.

It was satisfying to see Menja struggle so much, after years of being able to crush nearly anyone in the city, and Charlotte smiled. The act of smiling pulled painfully at the right side of her face. She reached up and touched it, feeling a keloid-like tightness stretching along her jaw and over her ear. A similar constriction on her shoulder kept her arm from having its full range of motion.

That was okay. Her body was unique, which nicely offset the only real downside of being a clone. She got originality built in, and that meant she wouldn’t have to worry about existential identity concerns like she might have if she’d been identical to her original self. She felt healthy enough, and she was happy with who she was.

Squinting around through the glare, Charlotte could make out milling figures and prone bodies. The rest of the “No, we’re not the Empire, we’re Fenrir’s Chosen” gang members were picking fights well away from the monster battling Mother. It was easy to guess why, with a handful of Mother’s tentacles that weren’t grappling Menja still scooping up screaming gang members to be swallowed or absorbed or, in the case of one unlucky woman, hurled at high speed at Cricket. With a pulse of blueberry scent Cricket dodged with impossible reflexes, managing to avoid the broken spine that she deserved.

That pulse drew Charlotte’s attention to the way her cape sense felt different, crisper than it had before. As Cricket sprinted forward to attack an emerging Menja clone, Charlotte latched onto that blueberry smell with her mind and smeared it into a fuzzy mess. A burst of sound accompanied a wave of nausea, and Cricket stumbled.

Charlotte smirked, and as the ammonia-tinted marmalade of the Menja clone entered her area of effect, she made it swirl and fuzz out of focus as well. The effect there was even more obvious, the woman sporadically growing and shrinking by turns and losing her balance when her stride lengthened unexpectedly. Her foot caught, and she crashed full-length on the ground. Cricket was forced to dance away to keep from being crushed by twenty feet of naked Valkyrie.

Too bad. That would have been a fitting end for a self-styled warrior. Would that count as a glorious death in battle, for the purposes of whatever twisted version of Valhalla the E88 had appropriated?

Off to one side, the original Menja brought both fists down on Noelle’s human torso, crushing it utterly. Menja’s hands were buried wrist-deep in bloody meat and broken bones, but Noelle hardly seemed to notice. The two heads, which by now had regrown after their earlier decapitation, bit down on Menja’s legs even as new flesh extruded up around the giant’s hands to regrow Noelle’s upper body.

With her arms trapped, Menja couldn’t block the tentacles that speared at her face. She also appeared to be shrinking the longer she kept contact with Noelle. Bracing herself, Menja heaved and twisted, and her right arm came free. The motion pushed her other arm even deeper inside, and she was unable to extract it as her power continued to diminish, suppressed by Mother’s touch.

The duplicate Menja regained her feet ]but continued to struggle with her fluctuating power. Cricket wasn’t doing much better, staggering forward in spurts and cocking her head to different angles as if listening for something that she couldn’t locate.

When they reached each other, Charlotte was severely disappointed with the outcome. Instead of Nazis murdering each other, she was treated to the sight of the fourteen-foot Menja clone catching one of Cricket’s arms in a massive fist and wincing slightly as the other kama bit into her thigh. The damage scaling of her power reduced the strike to more of a steak knife than a seven-inch blade. Against her larger size, it didn’t have much effect. She plucked it out and tossed it away.

“Melody, stop,” said Menja. “You don’t need to fight me.”

Cricket hissed something, but without her artificial larynx it didn’t come out as words. Still, Menja seemed to understand her either by lip reading or just knowing her well enough to get the gist.

“Maybe not the original,” she said. “But I’m still Nessa. Even if the one you know is over there stupidly fighting Mother.”

A hiss.

“Don’t be an idiot. This could be exactly what the Empire needs. The city is being overrun by undesirables, but with Mother we can have as many pure blooded true believers as we need to finally push them out.”

A hiss.

Menja gestured at her body, currently nineteen feet tall (though shrinking) and still very naked. “You’re calling this Aryan perfection degenerate? Look again.”

A hiss.

“You’ll see.” And with that, Menja started dragging Cricket toward Noelle.

Charlotte was utterly disgusted. It was hard to believe that any of Mother’s children could be like that, but she really shouldn’t have been surprised that a copy of a Nazi was still just as awful as the original. The truly horrible part was what she was going to have to do next. Steeling her heart and murdering her morals that screamed to never side with a Nazi, Charlotte trotted over to the kama that had been tossed aside, scooped it up. Then she stopped defocusing Cricket’s power, allowing it to snap back into crisp sharpness.

A burst of clear blueberry scent accompanied an overwhelming vertigo that seemed to hit the Menja duplicate just as hard as it hit Charlotte. The wannabe Valkyrie dropped her hold on Cricket, who deftly caught the kama out of the air when Charlotte tossed her way. Powers fully in control again, Cricket’s incredible reflexes and agility returned, and she swung her two kamas in a blurring flurry of strikes that sent Menja stumbling away with multiple gashes.

As Cricket chased the retreating clone out of her range, Charlotte took stock of the other fight. Menja was being pinned to the ground by two more of herself, one of whom was distinctly lopsided with disproportionate growth in different body parts. Meanwhile, Noelle was surrounded by a growing crowd of figures. There were actually enough of them now to block a substantial portion of the glare, and she could see that the ones lying prone on the ground were clothed, while those standing were not.

There was a bang and a burst of light, and a moment later Charlotte saw a masked woman in black backing away from the group. Charlotte didn’t recognize her as Night until she had already spun around to run. Too many eyes, apparently, and even with her flashbangs she couldn’t blind everyone to enter her changer form.

Only moments later, the gray mist of Fog’s breaker state rolled around the corner of the building. As it washed over the edge of the crowd, brief cries of pain confirmed that Night was within. Noelle didn’t hesitate. She let loose a chorus of roars from all seven of her throats and lunged into the midst of Fog’s miasma.

The roars turned to screams as Fog flowed into her countless eyes and poured down her throat. On the edge, where one of Noelle’s heads remained visible, Charlotte could see her skin bubbling as the corrosion battled her regeneration. It was slow, very slow, but the corrosion was just slightly faster. If she stayed inside long enough, Fog could kill her!

Charlotte started running. She couldn’t let the Nazis kill her Mother!

More screams accompanied Noelle spinning to reveal deep gashes in her side where something had gouged out deep trenches of flesh, granting Fog even greater access to her insides. Charlotte pushed herself harder, trying to force greater range of motion from the keloid constrictions and shoving Mother’s other children out of her way. Fog billowed and Charlotte lost sight of Noelle. The screams intensified with even greater rage and greater pain.

She finally reached about twenty yards away and could smell the sharp tang of orange oil. She smeared the focus as much as possible and the closest portion of fog lost its intentional movement. Five steps later she was close enough to latch onto Mother’s comforting ammonia scent, and she very deliberately left that one alone. The closer she got, the more of Fog’s orange oil she was able to smudge, and larger regions of the mist began moving chaotically. Isolated clouds of the stuff even began to coalesce into solidity before reverting again to formless mist.

Charlotte couldn’t see Noelle at all. Plunging into the mist herself wouldn’t do any good, or she’d willingly sacrifice herself. But if all she could accomplish was getting herself killed and eliminating her power to help, there was no point. She experimented with pushing harder or softer on Fog’s scent, but all that did was take more or less of his volitional control over his power, and she didn’t want to give any of it back to him.

Night passed in and out of her range too quickly to latch onto or affect, a fleeting sense of collard greens the only hint she had of where the deadly changer was moving. One by one, Noelle’s voices were silenced. Two returned before the last fell quiet, but the combined assault of Night and Fog was taking an awful toll, overwhelming her regeneration. Charlotte was growing frantic, preparing to rush in if only to buy Mother a little time, when a paired scent appeared, collard greens but tainted with ammonia. It happened again, though Charlotte wasn’t sure whether it was a second clone or just the first one re-entering her range.

A gust, whether from movement within or from a natural breeze Charlotte didn’t know, opened a brief sightline into Noelle’s ravaged body. Then with a surge of brackish mud, Noelle disappeared, replaced by a Menja. The original, it seemed, with no ammonia in her marmalade scent. A joyful cry of “Francis!” from behind her confirmed that Noelle was safe.

With Noelle’s escape, Fog coalesced into a human shape again, revealing that this Menja was indeed the original, clothed and armored. She wasn’t doing well, though, if her bruises and gasping breaths were anything to go by.

Charlotte smudged her scent, but a single stride took the giantess out of her range. Fog followed her retreat, glancing back briefly to see Night immobile on the ground, a massive wound through her abdomen spilling viscera across glass shards and mud. There were more bodies all around, some clothed, some not. Most were obviously dead, though some still clung to a shred of life. One of the dead ones looked like the surviving clone standing over Night’s still form. Charlotte joined Night’s duplicate in staring at the original until the blood started to congeal and collard green scent faded to nothing. They both watched a minute more, just to be sure, then turned away from each other.

Night walked in Noelle’s wake, into the refugee camp that had until now been under the protection of the former Empire capes. Charlotte wanted nothing to do with the Nazi, child of Mother or not, and headed the opposite way. She was still conflicted about having helped Cricket against Menja’s clone, and she needed to talk to her Zaydee. He’d have good advice for her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the comments and feedback recently, it's been encouraging to see those.
> 
> Thank you also for your patience waiting on this chapter. The disruption due to coronavirus measures has changed my schedule dramatically, and my writing time will be much more sporadic than it has been. I’ll do my best to keep you in the loop with any changes, but for now I am targeting an average update schedule of every other week, though actual updates will be irregular as the chapters are complete. I may decide to publish more “good enough” chapters to keep things moving along, but we’ll see.
> 
> FYI, my wife is a nurse and is working directly with COVID-19 patients, so there’s a high chance our family will be out of commission for some time in the near future. Hopefully we don’t manifest one of the severe cases. Stay safe out there!


	33. Topsy-Turvy 4.6

Whether by nature or as a result of his experiences, Commander Thomas Calvert was a suspicious man. If something looked too good to be true, it often was. However, sometimes it was simply the result of someone else making an idiotic mistake and playing right into his hands. The frequency with which such mistakes created opportunities for him was frankly surprising, but there was always the risk that the opponent was more clever than they appeared. Usually this wasn’t an issue, since he could decide which opportunities to seize after having already done so and knowing the consequences.

In this case, however, he knew that the other party was immensely capable. The paper in his hand was certainly a trap, and his usual safety net did not apply.

> **Prevent Miss Alcott from being questioned for 72 hours.  
>  -C**

This was disturbing for two reasons that had nothing to do with how the paper had mysteriously appeared under his coffee cup at his new desk in the PRT HQ.

No, the first thing that worried him was that the note instructed him to do something he had already planned on doing. Cauldron would not waste a favor, which strongly suggested that something in the next three days would occur to make sequestering his pet costly enough to abandon that course of action without the constraint of paying down his debt.

The second thing that worried him was that it was _different_ than the note he had received in his other timeline, slipped into the packet of briefing materials for the early morning meeting he’d arranged with Deputy Director Renick. That had been intended as a disposable timeline for information gathering so that he could later maneuver his assets into the most advantageous deployment, but Cauldron’s “request” had shoved that concern into the background.

> **Attend the debrief at 0800 and argue for quarantining Brockton Bay.  
>  -C**

Briefly delaying his meeting to “use the restroom” allowed Thomas to confirm that there was no note under his coffee cup. For whatever reason, he was now faced with a choice of which favor to fulfill. Refusing Cauldron was not an option worth entertaining.

Back in the meeting moments later, he went through his planned agenda on autopilot, frantically turning the dilemma over and over in his mind. Fortunately, the deputy director seemed to appreciate his concise, perfunctory approach and thanked him for keeping the meeting brief.

Meanwhile, in his other timeline he took reports from the PRT lieutenants under his command, as well as from the agents he’d assigned to his pet’s protection detail in the medical wing. It was terribly convenient to have so many former and potential PRT agents among his mercenaries, not that many of them knew Coil had survived the Siberian’s assault on his base.

Skitter and Tattletale’s decision to move against him so suddenly had forced him to pivot away from his slower timetable and accelerate his plans dramatically. He hadn’t planned to fake his death for some weeks yet, possibly several months, but the opportunity their mistake had presented was simply too perfect to pass up. The reactivation of former PRT members was trivial to arrange, and, on top of the practical considerations, having those units participate in the operation against Coil so as to avoid tipping off the villain through his alleged moles was deliciously ironic.

Now, though, he had a more difficult situation to navigate.

It didn’t take long for Thomas to find the perspective he needed. Yes, he was facing a dichotomy, but this was a benefit rather than an obstacle. This was not truly a choice between access to his pet and preservation of his other assets in the city. Rather, it was a choice between how he would be perceived by those around him. The minor difference between his two timelines apparently meant that Cauldron needed him to do different things to accomplish their goals, but it notably did _not_ mean that their goals were different. Receiving two different notes gave him additional insight into their movements that could save him a great deal of difficulty, if he leveraged it correctly.

If Cauldron was pushing for the city to be quarantined, then it would happen with or without his assistance. In that case, he would need to quickly exfiltrate himself and as many assets as possible. Chief among those would be Miss Alcott, since nobody would be looking for her if she was presumed lost in a quarantine zone.

On the other hand, the instruction was only to argue for quarantining the Bay, not to ensure that it happened. Emily was leading that debrief and would instinctively push back against anything Thomas supported. Lady had been more clear-sighted than that, but Emily hadn’t been Lady in a very long time. Now she was the epitome of rear echelon obstructionist bureaucracy. Perhaps advocating for quarantine would help to ensure the city remained open, which would preserve years of work that would otherwise have to be redone if he started over somewhere new.

So, his options were to arrange for an incident that kept his precog from regaining consciousness for three days, using methods that could possibly be traced back to him, or take an overt position condemning the city. The latter of those could be spun as an abundance of caution, a willingness to sacrifice. He was very good at manipulating a narrative. Being seen to interfere with a precog under heavy scrutiny from Watchdog was a far more detrimental position to be forced into. With Tattletale’s death, Miss Alcott was now the only Thinker in his possession and had thus become still more valuable. At the same time, avoiding the attention of Watchdog was an even higher priority. He needed to be able to preserve all his options for that concern.

Thomas briefly considered drawing out the decision to gather more intelligence and observe intermediate results of the decision, but there was precious little benefit there. He wasn’t an indecisive man, for all that his ability allowed him to profitably second guess himself on occasion. No, it would be far more beneficial to have additional timelines available than to sit on this waiting for more information.

Choice made, he dropped the timeline with the more onerous demand, splitting again to question his sources in preparation for the upcoming debrief.

\---0---

It was not hard to follow Cauldron’s instructions. Miss Militia was already advocating for at least a temporary quarantine of the Bay. She was wearing a clean costume but hadn’t had time to clean up after returning to base, and her weary appearance lent a convincing weight to her arguments. Thomas merely had to add his voice in support, arguing against Triumph and Director Renick, both of whom were horrified at the idea of walling off their city. Oddly, he also found himself arguing against a particularly outspoken field commander who wanted to carpet bomb the regions of the city where the Nine had been seen (which by now amounted to almost the entire thing).

In fairness to Commander Oakes (a woman he’d found impossible to suborn but moderately easy to manipulate with distractions as Coil), the situation as presented by Miss Militia was shockingly dire. Shocking to everyone else, of course. Thomas had experienced Miss Meinhardt’s effect on the city half a dozen times already and this particular iteration was rather middle-of-the-pack as far as that went. Still, this time it was happening both on the heels of an Endbringer battle and in conjunction with a visit by the Slaughterhouse Nine. The calamities exacerbated each other, and it was far from clear that the city could emerge victorious from this combination of threats. Even if it did, the odds that it could recover were in serious doubt.

If Miss Alcott hadn’t exhausted her ability in learning how to survive Crawler’s assault, those were precisely the questions that he would be putting to her now. Unfortunately, he knew that she would be out of commission for nearly a week after being forced to examine a single future that way. Even if she regained consciousness, she wouldn’t be providing any precog insights until after this crisis was resolved.

“Perhaps you didn’t understand me,” repeated Commander Oakes. She didn’t call attention to Thomas’ newly reactivated status again, but the implication was clear. “Quarantine will accomplish nothing except mire us in panicking civilians and force us to act defensively while the threats retain the initiative. Need I remind you that Jack Slash is apparently going to trigger the literal end of the world? Thinker advice is that he needs to _die_ , not be put in time out with a hundred thousand potential victims until the Siberian breaks through whatever wall we put up. Bakuda’s bombs are exotic enough that they have the best chance of killing him through her protection.”

“We are on a time limit,” Thomas replied. “We do not have the luxury of evacuating civilians, and we absolutely do not have the authority to obliterate the entire city in the hopes that we’ll manage to take Jack down with us. Jack Slash, who has survived under an active kill order for more than a decade. No, our priority is to keep him contained until reinforcements arrive to strike at him. Quarantine prevents him from slipping away in disguise with the thousands who will be trying to flee the city.”

Miss Militia spoke up, then. “I’ll remind you that with the help of the new cape Bouquet I was able to produce weaponry that harmed Bonesaw despite the Siberian’s invulnerability. We have options that don’t require killing half the city.”

“Wait,” said Renick. “Instating quarantine is far more drastic a measure than we need to simply limit travel in and out of the city. Do any of you understand what it would mean for the relief we’ve been receiving since Leviathan? Do you know how hard it is to lift a ‘temporary’ quarantine? I rotated through Grand Rapids a few years after the mess there was supposedly resolved, and let me tell you we do not want to invoke quarantine unless we are prepared for it to be permanent. Besides which, there is no reason to spend our resources on something so broad-spectrum as city-wide quarantine when the problems we need to address are singular. We should--”

“That’s just it!” interrupted Commander Oakes. “They’re _not_ singular. This Echidna can clone capes. We already have confirmed reports of Crawler fighting one or more clones of himself. We just heard about half a dozen copies of Miss Militia fighting against our own officers. What if we end up with twenty copies of Jack Slash?! Or the Siberian?”

“I already reported that the Siberian couldn’t be cloned,” said Miss Militia.

“Yes, but—”

“Enough.” Emily had enough presence and respect that she was able to cut through the argument and gain everyone’s attention. That respect from her subordinates would have become an obstacle for his takeover if she didn’t also have so many exploitable weaknesses.

She glared around the table, making sure all eyes were on her. “This is a momentous decision, and not one I find necessary to make this second. I will call the Chief Director and consult with her. In addition, the strike force chosen to spearhead the mission to kill Jack Slash will arrive in a little over an hour. Alexandria, Narwhal, and Gigaton are among them. If they feel that they cannot accomplish their mission due to Echidna’s presence I will recommend for quarantine of the city or an indiscriminate attack such as Commander Oakes has outlined. Until then, we need to consolidate and regroup.”

Reluctant nods around the table signaled acquiescence.

“To that end,” Emily eventually continued, “I am assigning Battery to search for Assault and the missing PRT agents. Take a full squad with you, keep in constant contact.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Battery looked relieved. She’d requested that assignment as soon as Miss Militia reported that they had been separated.

“Oakes, you will fortify our position here. Coordinate with Renick to assess our current deployable strength. Between Shatterbird’s attack and the aftermath of the Coil operation, we are working with reduced resources. I want to know how reduced.”

“Understood.”

“Miss Militia, while you are preparing the Protectorate to coordinate with our reinforcements, I want you to brief New Wave about Echidna. Ask them to come here later today.”

“I doubt they will respond,” Thomas interjected. “Apparently they got a lead on Panacea’s location in one of the camps and are searching for her there.”

Emily glared at him. “Fine. Since Calvert is already on top of that information, that’s his assignment. Current intel is that Panacea ran away to prevent her family from being harmed when the Nine come for her again. She’s obviously not thinking rationally. If she’s found, bring her here for protective custody.”

“Yes, Director. If Alexandria is having a rematch with the Siberian, having Panacea on hand will be better for everyone.”

Emily’s mouth curled in distaste. “Quite.” She was so fun to needle.

“Director Piggot,” said Miss Militia. “As the acting Head of the ENE Protectorate, I am removing the Wards from the city. They stepped up against Leviathan, but I won’t send child soldiers against the Nine and a clone generator. Not when we are debating a quarantine or worse and have a Protectorate-Guild strike team on the way to handle the matter.”

Emily glowered. “We need all the power we can bring to bear.”

“And if Alexandria tells me that she wants them involved in the operation, they will be easy to recall.”

Something crunched in Emily’s grip, and Thomas saw pieces of her pen fall to the table. “To be clear, _Acting Head_ ,” she grated, obviously restraining herself, “you are proposing to withdraw cape support from my PRT, in the middle of a situation that threatens to destroy or quarantine a city I am defending. Do I understand you correctly?”

Thomas grinned inside. This was priceless. Watching the raw pain and anger they were pulling from each other was almost as relieving as indulging himself on Pitter or Tattletale. He’d never heard of Miss Militia reacting like this. The way she’d emphasized child soldiers suggested this was a pet issue for her, but she had stumbled right into a minefield of Emily’s worst neuroses.

“No, ma’am,” answered Miss Militia. “I am telling you that the teenagers you describe as insubordinate and inadequately trained have no place in this operation and I will be posting them outside the current theater to support the evacuation that I am certain will result, since you have elected not to follow my recommendation of an immediate quarantine.”

“No! The PRT has oversight, and the capes under my command _will_ pull their weight!”

The two women stared at each other for a few tense seconds until Renick cleared his throat.

“I’ll discuss it with her, ma’am. She’s just been through a stressful engagement. Perhaps we should take a short recess to cool our heads?”

“Do so.” Emily pushed herself to her feet. “I’ll be on the phone with the Chief Director. Dismissed.”

Walking out of the meeting, Thomas sent a runner for the agent who’d told him about New Wave. In a second timeline he saw Renick get waylaid by an assistant, and he took the opportunity to follow Miss Militia towards the Ward quarters.

She noticed immediately, coming to a stop. “Can I help you, Commander?”

“I wanted to apologize for not being there for the fight. My unit might have made a difference if we’d supported you.”

“I see. Thank you, Commander, but no. You defused the situation with the Travelers, and you accomplished our primary mission of extracting the precog. You couldn’t have known the Siberian would arrive, or that Echidna was as powerful as she is.”

“I’m sorry all the same. I wanted to ask you about that new cape. Bouquet, was it?”

“Another time. I need to speak with the Wards.” She had turned away before she had even finished speaking, and he dropped the timeline. Nothing of benefit there.

He spent the next half hour trying to contact New Wave, while also poking around for any reports or gossip that he could turn loose. Most significant was the fact that Alexandria’s strike team contained two Thinkers. He only knew them by reputation, but he would need to be on his guard. Of less import, but more immediately interesting, was the discovery that Bouquet’s mother had arrived in the lobby and was waiting to meet with her daughter.

She was a fat woman, a bit shorter than average, and she had a sharp awareness of her surroundings. She was accompanied by a protective detail of a single guard, an Asian looking man. Thomas decided that this was an opportune time for a PRT Commander to assign himself some public facing duties. In one timeline he escorted the woman, who introduced herself as Laura Raimi, to a conference room and spent a few minutes learning everything he could about her and her family. Dropping that timeline, he split off another and descended to the first floor again. This time he approached her with a much better idea of how to ingratiate himself.

Before he could lead her out of the lobby again, a heavy girl in civilian clothes entered the building. It was fairly easy to recognize her as the cape who had been with Skitter for the past two days, and equally easy to see the resemblance to her mother.

“Mom!” she called. Mrs. Raimi turned quickly and moved to embrace the girl. “Charlotte! You’re okay!”

Thomas was tempted to reach out and touch her, to find out how she could boost his power, but he’d had odd interactions with Trumps in the past. He didn’t want to chance something in such a public venue if he could help it, especially not without a backup timeline. And he didn’t want to drop the other one, where he was still on the second floor, because he had just spotted something interesting. A runner had sprinted out of the dispatch center and started up the stairs. Safe bet that he was headed for Emily’s office.

The confirmation that this wasn’t a normal message came seconds later when a second runner sprinted down the hall toward the security center. The ad hoc communications that were in place since Shatterbird’s attack must not have been deemed secure enough for direct communication of critical intelligence. That was something he could exploit.

Not for the first time he cursed the fact that he only had two timelines to work with. Two let him accomplish more than double what he might have with only one, but it was still frustratingly limiting.

A commotion at the main entrance drew Thomas’ attention. An ugly girl with a twisted face and with lupus-like discolorations on her skin was pushing her way into the lobby. She was out of breath from running, but managed to call out, “Mom!”

Mrs. Raimi turned at the voice. “Charlotte? But…”

Thomas’ service pistol was in his hand in an instant, trained on the warped clone of Bouquet. The door guards immediately reacted to the indication of a threat and stepped up to block the new girl’s way. Unfortunately, this also blocked Thomas’ line of fire, and he wasn’t going to start off his new career with a friendly fire casualty.

“Wait, it’s okay,” said the clone, putting her hands up. “I’m not going to hurt anyone. But I think _she_ might!”

The only person looking the right direction was Officer Hong. Fortunately, he was also close enough and fast enough to tackle the first Charlotte to the ground when she whipped out a knife from an inside pocket and tried to stab her mother.

Thomas stopped in shock, processing what he’d just seen. It wasn’t difficult to figure out, but it did take several moments to actually believe it. The obvious clone, the one visibly distorted to the point that Thomas had instantly recognized what she was, had come to _save_ Mrs. Raimi.

Meanwhile, the first Charlotte was also a clone, despite lacking any visible mutations. In none of his alternate timelines had Noelle ever produced a duplicate with normal features. There was always something that set them apart from the original, from a normal human. Yet clearly this was one of the murderous clones, driven to destroy what her original loved.

Taken together, it was clear that something profound had changed.

When had this change occurred? Hadn’t Miss Militia reported that all of the clones she saw were deformed? She was professional to a fault and wouldn’t miss something that important, even if she had been acting a little off during…

Oh.

Just then the metal shutters over the doors and windows rattled shut, locking down the PRT HQ. In his other timeline he’d reached the dispatch center and could now hear nine or ten voices having their own frantic conversations.

“…left the building with all Wards twenty-one minutes ago, heading west on…”

“…to initiate master/stranger eyes-on protocols effective immediately. Stand by for…”

“…Romeo Alpha acknowledged. Battery did not leave their sight at any point prior to finding Assault and Miss Militia. Reports confirm…”

“…is correct. Current evidence suggests a hostile, mastered clone of Miss Militia has abducted the entire Wards ENE.”

Thomas shook his head. And to think that he’d expected to need to manufacture a crisis. With the current chaos, his opportunities were creating themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, today is April 1. No, this is not an April Fools joke chapter. Thank you for reading. Thanks also to Juff for beta reading this and offering corrections.


	34. Topsy-Turvy 4.7

Laura Raimi’s feet ached from walking all night. Agent Hong had provided transportation to the PRT headquarters, but that didn’t change the fact that she’d been pacing through the public areas of the shelter since 1 a.m.

Charlotte had been missing since Sunday afternoon. The fragile grip the authorities claimed on the city had been pulverized by Leviathan, and the whole mess seemed to be sliding into feudalism or anarchy, which left plenty of paths for her fears to explore. That was before Tuesday, when every piece of glass within twenty miles had exploded. Knowing that the Slaughterhouse were visiting Brockton Bay suddenly opened whole new terrors to imagine befalling her daughter.

It had been another twenty-four hours of worry before Agent Hong had contacted her and let her speak with Charlotte over his radio. The relief that she was alive and safe was enough to let Laura fall sleep—for a few hours, at least. Around 11pm she had jolted awake from a nightmare. When staring at the ceiling didn’t do anything to stop her from thinking about what Charlotte had said, she got up.

Abducted by the Merchants. What did that mean, really? What had happened to her daughter? There were too many possibilities, all of them bad. Whatever it was, Charlotte had come out the other side with powers, which meant Laura couldn’t pretend that it was anything less than horrific.

There was plenty of conflicting information out there, but the Jewish community in Brockton Bay had more than its share of triggers, thanks to the Empire. They knew the truth about how powers manifested. No matter the specifics, Laura knew her daughter was hurting.

When the sun finally rose, Laura was waiting out in front of the shelter for Agent Hong. They didn’t speak much on the way to the PRT building, but the ubiquitous shards of glass inspired another fear. What if something happened to Laura, and she wasn’t there when Charlotte needed her?

Laura was a glazier. She was alive today thanks to the warning her work crew had gotten a few minutes before Shatterbird sang. If not for that firefighter with a bullhorn, she’d have been installing new windows instead of huddling behind a cinderblock wall. She trusted her friends and family to care for Charlotte if she died, and her will was current, but none of those preparations accounted for Charlotte triggering. She had no idea what to do to help, but it would be worse if she wasn’t there to try.

After forty minutes of standing in the PRT lobby, Laura’s anxiety hadn’t diminished. Not only had Charlotte not arrived, nobody had given any indication of how long they would need to wait. In fact, the responses Agent Hong had relayed about “waiting for someone of sufficient seniority to be available” were beginning to sound like a bureaucratic shuffle rather than the reality of an overtaxed system.

Had something happened to Charlotte? Was she even here? If she was just sleeping late, surely someone would have explained the delay.

Finally, an agent approached and introduced himself as a field commander, which didn’t sound like the person of “sufficient seniority” that they had been waiting for. She assumed he was just there to placate her while they tried to come up with a real excuse. She was debating whether or not to accompany him to a conference room for “sensitive discussion” when she heard her daughter’s voice calling her.

“Mom!”

Laura turned and saw Charlotte, who was wearing raggedy cast-offs and a brilliant smile under cheerful eyes.

Whoever said that eyes were the window to the soul knew nothing about souls, or about windows. As a glazier, a mother, and a woman of the Book, Laura understood both. Eyes and smiles could lie as easily as words, and Laura knew from a thousand tells that her daughter was lying.

She rushed to her little girl, wrapping all of that pain close to her own heart. There was brokenness and hurt, but community and time and G-d could heal that.

“You’re okay,” she promised. It wasn’t true yet, but it would be. Right now, Charlotte needed the comfort. “You’re okay!”

Charlotte sagged into Laura, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. Laura stroked her hair and spoke in a whisper. “You’re okay.”

Their embrace was interrupted by Charlotte’s voice calling to her again from the front entrance. Looking up in surprise, Laura saw her daughter waving. Was this her power? To be in more than one place at a time? Laura blinked her eyes clear to see Charlotte better, and then…

The Charlotte in her arms was ripped away, tackled to the ground by Agent Hong. A knife clattered onto the tile floor, a line of blood welling up on Laura’s forearm. Other agents ran forward and further separated her from her daughter. Charlotte struggled and screamed as she was cuffed, shouting angry threats. The second Charlotte was likewise surrounded and restrained, though she acquiesced more readily. At the same time, the building’s empty, glassless windows were loudly covered by mechanical shutters, turning the room dim and shadowy. After Shatterbird, most of the lights were nonfunctional.

The agents were professional. While one group dealt with the commotion, another contingent kept their eyes up looking for any additional trouble. A third, smaller group concentrated on getting civilians out of harm’s way. Laura resisted the hands pulling on her arms—not enough to make them escalate and truly remove her, but enough to keep sight of both instances of Charlotte. She watched their body language, listened to their voices. By the time the two had been summarily bundled out a side door, she was certain: both girls were her daughter.

Turning to the faceless officer still trying to gently-but-firmly pull her away, Laura demanded, “Take me to my daughter.”

“Who?” The woman sounded distracted. A tinny sound suggested her helmet radio was also speaking to her.

“That cape you just detained,” said Laura. “She’s my daughter. Take me to her.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I can’t—”

“Then talk to your superior and get permission. I am her guardian, and you don’t have permission to question her without me present.”

“That’s not possible. We have a confirmed Master-Stranger situation. We need to determine which, if either, is the actual person.”

“Who better to make that determination than the person who knows her best? Get me in there with her. Them.”

“That’s not how Master-Stranger screening works.”

“Bullshit. That’s exactly how Master-Stranger screening works. My brother-in-law was in the PRT in Minneapolis.” Not that Barry had ever been involved in a real M-S event before he left the force, but Laura could bluff as well as the next person. “Either way, I have a right to see her.”

“This crisis is not limited to you or your daughter, ma’am.” The officer gestured around them, where the urgent activity in the lobby had only increased after Charlotte’s removal. Something else was clearly happening. But that could be made to work in her favor.

“Then you probably don’t want to be dealing with me right now. Give me access to my daughter, and I’ll be out of your hair so you can go handle whatever it is.”

Ten minutes more of badgering different officers in the command chain saw Laura escorted to a viewing area with “one way” windows into two different interrogation rooms. Both instances of her daughter were alone, handcuffed to their separate tables.

It was painful to watch them, especially being unable to speak to either.

The first one, the one Laura had hugged, looked both angry and utterly despondent. Her head was resting on her arms, which were stretched out on the table in front of her. Her left hand clenched intermittently, hard enough to make her arm shudder.

The second was only mildly nervous. She leaned back in her chair and seemed to relax, staring at the ceiling while she waited patiently for someone to interview her. She didn’t seem to care about the angry red rash that spread across her face and over large splotches of her exposed arms and legs, or the way that her right eye was noticeably higher and larger than her left. Laura couldn’t guess what might have caused an injury like that, assuming it wasn’t a result of her possible duplication power. Parahumans were beyond her experience. Charlotte was definitely aware of her physical alterations, since she had spent a short time studying her reflection in the shiny chrome surface of the table when Laura first arrived.

Agent Hong and the two other agents in the viewing room remained nearly silent, only speaking occasionally in low mutters. Laura hadn’t missed the fact that the doors to the viewing area had been locked behind her after entering.

After waiting for far too long, the second Charlotte perked up and looked around, focusing on the door through which Laura had entered the viewing area—despite supposedly being unable to see through the wall and mirror. Approximately ten seconds later the other version of Charlotte glanced up in the same direction, just as Laura heard the lock disengage. The knob turned, and a cape strode inside, followed by more PRT personnel. None of them spoke.

The new cape was wearing black jeans and a dull gold button-up shirt embroidered with a flowing design that made it look like he had vanquished his local knitting circle in glorious battle. A mask of felted and knotted yarn in light colors contrasted with his ebony skin. Both girls tracked his progress with their heads as he walked to a folding chair in front of the window.

“Hmm.”

After a few moments the despondent instance of Charlotte buried her face in her elbows again. The cape gave a hand signal to one of the agents flanking him, who spoke into her radio. In response, a petite woman in office wear rather than the usual PRT uniform opened the door into the second interrogation room. That Charlotte startled a bit at the sound and watched the woman approach and seat herself across the table.

“I am Agent Ramirez,” she said. The sound was piped into the observation room through speakers in the ceiling. “Can you tell me who you are?”

Charlotte smiled. “Of course! I’m Charlotte Raimi. I gave Agent Scarpelli my name yesterday when she helped arrange for me to contact my mom.”

Agent Ramirez nodded. “Do you have any proof that it was you on the other end of that call?”

“No? I mean, I remember it but it wasn’t me.”

“What do you mean?”

“That was Charlotte, not me.”

“So you are aware you aren’t the original Charlotte?”

“Yes? I mean, it’s pretty obvious. I knew as soon as Mother made me that I was a clone, but we look different and have different powers so it wouldn’t have been hard to figure out. Why wouldn’t I know that?”

Laura felt a hand on her shoulder and looked over to see Agent Hong offering her a handkerchief. It wasn’t until she tried to take it that she realized she was shuddering.

“Your powers are different than Bouquet’s?” asked Agent Ramirez. “How so?”

“Well, I haven’t quite figured mine out yet, since I haven’t been near any other capes until now, but the scents are a bit more powerful, and I get more information from them.” She shrugged. “Not that I’d really gotten a handle on my powers before. I’d only known about them for a few days.”

The cape at the window muttered something into a communicator, and Agent Ramirez nodded minutely. “Tell me about your mother.”

“Okay. She’s a glazier and has been working on reconstruction while the city tries to get back on its feet. She’s a great mom, and I’m looking forward to seeing her. The other me didn’t manage to hurt her, did she?”

“No, she didn’t. I’m told Mrs. Raimi was not harmed. I have some follow-up questions about what you just said, but let me first clarify my previous question. You referred to the cape that made you, Echidna, as Mother. Could you please tell me about her?”

Charlotte’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“We don’t know much about her, and she’s causing a great deal of damage in the city.”

“No. I won’t help you hurt Noelle.”

“What if we could help her?”

“You probably could. But you’d have to convince me you would.”

“I’ve been told that helping Echidna is precisely what the PRT hopes to do.”

“Hopes and intentions are different. And coming from the organization that ‘helps’ the city by letting a white supremacist gang with blatant Nazi symbology control half of it, that comes across as a very bland reassurance. Before I got cloned I told you I was going to join the Protectorate. I’m willing to do so now, even if I mostly came here to help my mom. But if you insist on fighting or even antagonizing Mother, you won’t get my cooperation.”

Laura found herself collapsing onto a folding chair, guided by Agent Hong who caught her arm. To hear her daughter talk about this other cape as her Mother…. It wasn’t even as if Laura had been replaced, because Charlotte clearly remembered and cared for her. It was more that she had been superseded, surpassed. Her role as mother had been usurped.

“Who… who is Echidna?” she whispered to Agent Hong.

He just shook his head.

Laura tried to follow the rest of the interrogation as Agent Ramirez moved on to questions about how Charlotte had known her mother was in danger, what she’d done before reaching the PRT building, and a recounting of events since Leviathan. Inside, she was wrangling her feelings into submission, trying to make sense of what she’d heard.

Clones. What did that really mean? It was such an imprecise term. It could mean a physical copy, a mental copy, or both. An exact copy, or one with no independence, or one that bore only mocking similarity to the original.

Laura had already decided in the lobby that both instances of Charlotte acted like her daughter. She’d thought the duplication was an effect of Charlotte’s own power. Did it really matter if she’d been subjected to the effect of another parahuman instead? No. It didn’t change what Laura would do.

What truly convinced her, though, was the pain she saw in the eyes of the other Charlotte when Agent Ramirez moved into the second room to question her. It was clear to Laura that Charlotte was hurt, lashing out at others. Something had hurt her enough that she’d even tried to stab her mother. Her not-good-enough mother, since this Echidna had taken that spot. But where was Echidna now? Not comforting Charlotte, not taking care of this copy of Laura’s daughter.

It would be harder than she thought, dealing with Charlotte’s trigger and everything else, but she would do everything she could to help. She had three daughters now, instead of one. (Laura stifled a sob at the thought that maybe Charlotte had died in the process of being cloned. What if she never saw her again? What if she didn’t have three, but two? Neither of the Charlottes here had known where the original was, except to guess that she was still with Noelle.)

Laura was jolted from her thoughts when the cape at the window stood and headed for the door. She lurched to her feet, wiping her eyes as she tried to follow.

Agent Hong grabbed her elbow, holding her back.

“Wait! Whoever you are, let me come too!”

The cape turned around. “Tangle, ma’am. And you are Mrs. Raimi?” It wasn’t really a question.

“Please, you have to let me come. You’re going to a meeting that will decide their fate, right? I need to help them. I know they’re clones but they are still my daughter. I can’t let you treat them as, as….” She couldn’t think of what to say and didn’t want to voice her worst fears in case it planted ideas in his mind.

Tangle’s face looked young, from what she could see of it, maybe early twenties. He couldn’t possibly know what it meant to be a parent, certainly not the parent of a teenager. Still, he gave her a soft smile.

“I understand, ma’am. I’m on my way to report to Alexandria and Director Piggot. Right now everything is sensitive information, and I can’t tell you very much of what my power concluded. But there are two things I can tell you. First, you are right: those ‘clones’ are people, individuals. I will be explaining that very clearly in my report. Second, I can tell that your daughter”—he paused a moment—“your _original_ daughter, is still alive. I hope the rest of my information will help us bring her to you safely.”

The posture and positioning of Agent Hong and the others made it clear that Laura wouldn’t be allowed to follow Tangle to the meeting with Alexandria. Or, if she had to guess, even to leave the observation room. She nodded. That was the most important thing, anyway, and this way she could stay close to Charlotte.

Laura settled back into her chair and faced the window again.

“Ah, Mrs. Raimi?” said Tangle as he reached the door. He sounded a little nervous.

Laura looked over her shoulder and saw him picking at the embroidery on his shirt. “Yes?”

“Um, well, you may want to start preparing yourself. There’s a distinct possibility that you may discover you have, um, more than two copies of your daughter.”

Then Tangle was gone, the door was locked, and Laura was left to her own thoughts again as she watched the two daughters she could see through the window.

There was another clone of Charlotte out there somewhere? That was good to know and plan for, but it didn’t change anything substantial. Three girls or four, she’d find a way to manage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tangle is inspired by a character of the same name from The Plague over on SpaceBattles. If I get permission from that author, I will align Tangle’s history and character with their version and borrow him directly. He doesn’t do much in this chapter, but I’ll keep you updated on his status when he appears again.
> 
> Thank you to Juff for helping to edit this chapter, and thank you to everyone for your patience.


	35. Topsy-Turvy 4.8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING: Suicidal ideation, mind control, non-consensual relationships.
> 
> I don’t expect the intensity of these elements in the current chapter to be problematic for most readers, but the themes introduced here will be continued in future chapters. I will do my best to address these topics respectfully and with the gravity they deserve. Please do the same in any comments.

Amy walked through the camp with her head down. Every abduction training she’d received had emphasized that the first 72 hours of a missing person’s case were critical. She’d never imagined trying to use those lessons in reverse to keep herself from being found, but now she was glad to have a checklist in her mind of what (not) to do. It was mostly common sense about things to help herself (not) be noticed, things she could have thought of herself, but she knew she wasn’t calm enough to figure everything out on her own. The list helped.

She was loitering near the latrines, where lines had formed and she wouldn’t look out of place simply standing around. Also a place where most people had something urgent on their mind and weren’t paying attention to their surroundings, and didn’t want to linger after they finished their business.

The 72 hour mark probably didn’t mean much, practically, but it gave her a goal to shoot for. She’d been away since Monday night; if she could just stay hidden until sundown, the clues would be harder to find. Witness memories would become far less reliable. She could find a way out of the city.

For what felt like the thousandth time, Amy second guessed herself. She was a member of New Wave, which meant everyone in Brockton Bay knew her face. The farther she got from the city, the less celebrity she would have to contend with. It was less than an hour before noon. Should she just leave now instead of waiting for nightfall? Which would draw more attention? Sticking around in this overcrowded camp, a different one than she had stayed at the previous day, would make it easier to be lost in the crowd. Not that going unnoticed was difficult for her. It was always Vicky who had…

Amy’s breath caught in her throat and she forced her thoughts onto something, anything else.

Food. She would need to take food with her when she went. The granola bars and other rations that were being handed out wouldn’t last her long, since she couldn’t stock up on anything. Supplies were limited and hoarding was something that everyone watched for.

She might have to rely on her power. If she found a fruit tree along the way, it would be trivial to encourage it to produce enough to feed her. Not that she wanted to use her power that way, but it was better than inflicting herself on Mark and Vicky and…

Leaving the city. Food. Right.

Food would only be a severe problem if she was walking. If she found a ride, then she would be out of the disaster zone much sooner, and there would be more options for the necessities. The farther away she got, the more thoroughly she would be out of everyone’s lives. The sooner she left, the better off they would be. The problem was doing so undetected. If they were still looking for her, she could cause more problems by not staying hidden.

Which direction should she go? South was easiest, with larger cities like Boston and New York to serve as transit hubs if she found a way to get money. West was less populated, and also the direction where she was slightly less likely to encounter people who recognized her. North would have her running into even fewer people, but trying to cross the Canadian border would be stupid.

Unless… could she just make sure that people forgot they’d seen her? It would make it so much easier to simply disappear, and short-term memory was often unreliable anyway. It would be so easy to… NO. **NO.** She had caved in a moment of weakness, but she would not break her rule again. She would NOT touch another person’s brain. Ever.

West seemed like the best option, and she could always change her mind later. Mind made up, Amy started walking. Threading her way between tents and around FEMA vehicles, she was halfway out of the camp when screams erupted behind her.

Whirling to look, Amy couldn’t see anything. There were too many tents and people and other things in the way. Most people around her were frozen, tensed to run as soon as the danger made itself known. A few were already in motion, fleeing or gathering personal items to take with them. She could see three National Guardsmen sprinting towards the disturbance.

The screams continued, spread. Amid the rest, one voice caught her attention and froze her heart. “Mannequin! It’s Mannequin!”

The people near her burst into motion, taking up the cry that sent all who heard it scattering away. A large man carrying his six-year-old daughter stumbled into Amy on his way past, jolting her out of her paralysis. She ran.

For a few minutes she dared to hope that this was simply coincidence, that her presence had nothing to do with the Nine attacking this camp. They did that sort of thing, after all. But with every turn she took, the most intense screams were always behind her. Mannequin had found her, was chasing _her_ personally.

If only Vicky were here! She would… No. She shouldn’t wish for that. It was better that Amy was alone. Even if Mannequin killed her, her sister would be better off without her around.

If Mannequin had found her, he had a way to track her specifically. She’d never outrun him on foot, so she needed a vehicle. Amy turned again, hurling herself at an unattended troop transport with National Guard markings. She got the door open and scrambled into the driver’s seat behind the missing windshield. All of the cloth and padding had been removed, leaving only a metal frame. That was good news, because it meant the truck was functional. Nobody would have bothered to remove the glass-infused upholstery in a truck they couldn’t drive.

Keys. Keys. There! The engine started up, and she shifted into gear.

She’d only moved forward a few feet when a loud bang startled a shriek from her as the cab lurched and dropped lower on the driver’s side. A glance out the window showed a long chain retracting away from the wheels, trailing a long blade mounted in a white orb.

Mannequin.

She slammed the gas pedal all the way to the floor, fighting the steering wheel as it pulled hard to the left with the drag of the popped tires. She overcorrected, and the truck swung to the right for a few yards before trundling into a pair of 500 gallon water barrels. She wasn’t going fast enough to really damage the truck more than crumpling the hood, and the water barrels didn’t move at all.

Frantically shifting into reverse, she had barely started to back up when a light impact sounded from the roof. With the truck still rolling backwards, Amy threw herself out the door just as a jumble of orbs and chains swung through the window and buried several blades in the rear wall of the cab.

Amy lurched to her feet as quickly as she could, limping slightly as she tried to run. The soft rattle of a snaking chain was all the warning she had before long metallic fingers seized her shoulder and yanked her backward. Flat on her back, holding back sobs, she could see Mannequin approaching like some robotic spider. She tried to roll to the side, but it was too late. One pure white foot descended onto her neck and forced her back into the dirt. It was flexible, more like a hand—no, a claw—and it wrapped around her throat choking off her air.

Mannequin’s blank face stared sightlessly down into her own. A hand entered her field of vision and sprouted several long blades, one after the other. _Shing, shing, shing._ The hand descended, and Amy would have screamed if she could breathe, but even that much freedom was denied her.

Instead of plunging into her brain, Mannequin’s blades buried themselves in the dirt beside her ear. His hand moved, and as she struggled for air Amy could only hear the rasp of steel passing through gravelly earth.

Loud bangs, gunshots, interrupted him. Mannequin collapsed into a pile of limbs that scuttled away as the rifle fire continued. Amy gasped and choked, her lungs seemingly unable to decide whether inhaling new air or expelling the old was the more dire necessity.

Weapons continued to bark nearby, but a woman in a National Guard uniform grasped Amy’s hand, gripped her shoulder, and helped her to her feet.

“Come on, miss. Let’s get you away.”

Bent over, gasping, Amy saw the mutilated ground where Mannequin’s hand had torn up the earth. Large block letters spelled _CHA_ Λ and nothing else.

“Look at me, miss. I’m Private Berkshore. I’ll keep you safe, but I need you to run with me.”

‘Miss.’ That meant she hadn’t been recognized, that Vicky wasn’t coming. Good.

Amy nodded, and with Private Berkshore’s arm wrapped around her back she stumbled into something resembling a run. Skin contact gave Amy a comprehensive view of the Private’s body. Strained ligaments, light abrasions, and a predisposition for hypertension, but otherwise good health except for the very obvious fatigue from over a week of hard work and too little sleep.

Did she have to heal this woman? Heroism demanded yes, but after what she’d done to Vicky, Amy wasn’t sure she was a hero any more. Removing her fatigue might help them escape, but at the same time it might be obvious enough to identify her as Panacea. Was it too late to hide?

It didn’t take long for the guilt to win, as usual. She couldn’t ignore her responsibility, she couldn’t leave any more weight on the scale of her conscience than she had to. Reaching out with her power, Amy refreshed the energy stores in her muscles, removing the minor buildup of lactic acid. She improved the signaling balances of the peripheral nerves, improved the blood oxygenation, and reset the circadian rhythms to a better synchronization.

The woman’s steps were a bit faster, a bit surer. They reached the last row of civilian tents before the makeshift barracks, and skin contact gave Amy’s power a perfect view of Private Berkshore’s body as a 12-inch blade punched through her back, severing her spine and obliterating her heart. The Private dropped, unmoving, and Amy lost her footing entirely. She tumbled away, collapsing the nearest tent and getting tangled in the lines that had held it up.

Mannequin approached slowly, cutting tent ropes as he came. The chain connecting to the arm that had impaled Private Berkshore retracted link by link until he stood above the dead woman. He left the blade in place, buried in the Private’s back, simply turning his head to stare at Amy again. _Shing, shing, shing._ Three blades extruded from his other hand, and he dropped to one knee, beginning to carve letters into the skin and muscle of Private Berkshore’s body.

C…H…

Amy heard running footsteps approaching from behind, but she couldn’t look away. Mannequin’s eyeless mask still stared soullessly.

A…N…

Gasping breaths of exertion, a relieved voice saying “I found you!”

G…E

Mannequin hefted the body and tossed it towards Amy. It came to rest with the letters upside down from her perspective, but she could still read the message. The challenge. _CHANGE_.

For the third time that day a hand grasped Amy’s shoulder, but this time it wasn’t trying to move her. It didn’t throw her to the ground or lift her to her feet; it just rested there. And yet, this touch brought an even greater shift.

Suddenly, as though a blindfold had been removed, she could sense everything around her. Without skin contact, she knew the girl behind her inside and out, held her in the grasp of her power. The root system beneath the ground sprang into focus. A bird that fluttered over head passed into her range then out again, but for that moment she knew everything about it.

And Mannequin. Organs in pods with micropumps delivering juices and filtering waste. Redundant functionality pruned away. She should have been disgusted to sense a brain in three pieces floating in a nutrient slurry, to see isolated nerves and bits of muscle firing off, straining against invisible mechanisms that her power couldn’t feel.

Instead, it fascinated her. That chunk of liver in the thigh, it wasn’t doing what a normal liver would have, and she wanted a closer look, and she felt the mind send signals to the … hand, apparently, since that was the piece that once again extended blade with a _shing_ , and Amy’s eyes widened as she came back to herself and realized what that meant.

In a panic, she melted the liver and muscle and peripheral nerves, shredded the bits of spleen and tendon. Mannequin spasmed, ports opening randomly across his shell, his mind racing to discover the problem, identify the attack. She could feel him trying things that didn’t work, feel the disappointment as more and more of his tech failed to respond. A gout of flame from his right knee set fire to a row of tents, and his neck shot out like a grapple gun. She felt his resolve as he decided that he was done, his hate when he started activating his last resort weaponry, his sadistic joy at taking as many people with him as he could.

Amy had promised herself never to touch a person’s brain again, but she could see everything Mannequin had done to himself. He was not even close to human any more. Stopping him wouldn’t require her to break her rules.

With a thought, she erased all of the nerve potentials across his brain, rendering it inert in an instant. Then, to be thorough, she dissolved it into a morass of lipid, little more than a pudding lightly flavored with neurochemicals.

Just like that, Mannequin was dead. The head piece exploded violently from where it had landed when the neck extended, and one of his upper arms outgassed something noxious that drifted away in the breeze. The rest of the mechanisms locked up or spun down, and the pile of limbs became even less than it appeared.

Amy took a deep breath. She shouldn’t feel so satisfied, but she did. Well, maybe she should. She hadn’t broken her rule, this time, because Mannequin hadn’t been a person. More than when she’d mercy-killed the abomination that was Pagoda, more than when she’d paralyzed the thing that had once been Mouse Protector, killing this…this _simulacrum_ felt right.

“Good job,” said the girl behind her.

Amy turned to look, even though her power told her everything about the girl already. Fifteen, Caucasian, heavyset but fairly fit, decently athletic musculature. Odd features in some of her joints, though, and a few other minor discrepancies that reminded Amy of some of the Case 53s she’d examined before.

“I’m Bouquet. I’m so glad I got here in time. Mother wanted to meet you, said you could help her get revenge on the Slaughterhouse Nine. From the way you just took down Mannequin, I’m sure she’s right. Please, will you come with me?”

It took Amy a moment of frantic thought to parse through what she had seen. Even now, she wasn’t sure, so she nodded and allowed Bouquet to help her stand.

“Who did you say wanted to meet me?” she asked, then watched Bouquet’s brain while listening to the answer.

Yes, Amy’s first impression had been right. With every mention or thought of “Mother,” who was apparently named Noelle, the girl’s brain signaled an artificial loop of devotion and loyalty and subservience. Bouquet had been mastered by this cape, and been tasked with bringing Amy to them.

Still not wanting to be recognized or questioned by the National Guard, or anyone else, really, Amy let Bouquet lead the way for a short distance before generating tranquilizers in her bloodstream and rendering her instantly unconscious. Kneeling over the prone cape, who she only now realized was wearing nothing but a plastic tarp and sandals, Amy examined her more closely.

It took a few seconds to place the oddities she had noticed, to recognize what had seemed strange about the girl. All of her cells, all of her organs, everything was less than an hour old. No wear and tear on the joints, no abrasions or scars, no calluses. When she knew what to look for, it was obvious. Bouquet was artificial. A power construct.

Amy considered a moment. Through no fault of her own, Bouquet had been mastered to serve some other cape. She wasn’t a person any more than Mannequin was, so Amy’s rule didn’t prevent her from trying to remove the master effect. However, the more she traced that loyalty loop through the brain, the more she realized how fundamental it was to the construct’s personality, to who they were. Even if they weren’t a person, she couldn’t make drastic changes like that, especially not without permission from … well, somebody.

The safest and kindest thing to do would be to redirect that loyalty, make sure it was to someone that wouldn’t use them to cause harm. Eventually she could find someone who was worthy of that devotion, but for now she was the one who was here. Amy had rules and followed them. That would be enough.

With the lightest of touches, Amy adjusted the smallest number of connections necessary in the construct’s brain, redirecting that loyalty loop to focus on herself instead of whoever Noelle was. Amy woke Bouquet, then, helping her to stand.

“Where is Noelle,” she asked, “and what does she want with me?”

\---0---

As it turned out, Amy didn’t need Bouquet’s directions to find Noelle, even if Amy’s intention had initially been to avoid the clone generator. The lightshow of New Wave’s lasers and shields at the opposite end of the camp, along with bestial roars that reverberated through the air, made it obvious where to look.

If it hadn’t been for the sight of Vicky diving toward something on the ground, Amy probably would not have approached. But now she knew about the cape New Wave was fighting, and if she didn’t share that knowledge, Vicky might get hurt. Amy would never forgive herself for that, especially since Vicky was only out here looking because Amy had failed to run away undetected.

Amy came around the corner of the one permanent building in the camp, a community center that was being used for food distribution and command post, to see hundreds of figures running about, most of them completely naked. More clones, then, constructs of Noelle’s power. There were some people interspersed with the clones, wearing a mix of military uniforms and casual clothing. Most of them were trying to flee, but the crowd of constructs was hindering them. A few were trying to fight against Noelle or the clones, but those were quickly overwhelmed. Some were simply restrained, while others were hauled towards the mass of flesh that was Noelle’s Case 53 body.

Noelle’s body was utterly fascinating to watch. The biomechanics of those legs, the underpinning skeleton that supported nine different heads in addition to the humanoid torso on top, not to mention the insane regeneration effect. Ideas sparked in Amy’s mind and she squashed them ruthlessly. This was a perfect example of why she _shouldn’t_ make any of the things she imagined. Creations like this were horrifying to the public, caused panic and widespread damage, and turned people against anyone who could manipulate biology. And all of that was before the insanity of powers got involved with regeneration or clone formation or the many things Amy knew she could force into being if she let herself.

Still, she allowed herself to watch. Just for a minute. Because Noelle was incredible. Amy startled out of her reverie when she realized that Noelle was charging toward her.

“I smell you!” she yelled.

The other fighters looked her way, recognizing her even from a hundred yards away.

“Ames!” came Victoria’s shout, followed immediately by Carol and Sarah’s simultaneous “Amy!”

Despite the distance, Amy didn’t miss the play of emotions over Victoria’s face, joy turning to disgust turning to hate. The same as Monday. Another of Amy’s thousand momentary hopes died a gruesome death.

Carol called something up to her daughter, who swooped down and scooped up the ball of light that was Brandish’s breaker form, hurling it hard through the air. Carol emerged as she hurtled past Noelle, manifesting two bright swords that severed the human torso and removed a snakelike head. She transformed into light again to bounce off of the ground, coming to a rest on her feet between Noelle and Amy.

Meanwhile, Crystal had circled around, blasting lasers at any of the eyes she could see on the side facing Amy. Aunt Sarah landed beside Carol and projected a large shield that was strong enough to halt Noelle’s charge before shattering into motes of purple light.

“Back off, Echidna!” Carol shouted. “Leave these people alone.”

The human torso had regrown in time to answer, but Noelle didn’t say anything. She merely charged again, bouncing off the new shield Sarah had erected.

“She’s smarter than this,” said Bouquet at Amy’s side. “She’s up to something.”

Before Amy could ask what she meant, Carol disappeared, replaced by a naked clone. A yell showed where she had appeared on Echidna’s back. Her hands and feet were already sunk several inches into the dark flesh, but with a pop she reverted to her breaker state and rolled down Noelle’s flank to the ground. The panther-like head there snapped at the ball, succeeding only in knocking it away.

Sarah tried to blast Noelle with her lasers, but another teleport swapped her with a more distant clone, facing the wrong direction. Instead of hitting Noelle, her purple blasts punched holes through the community center.

A powerful red laser lanced down from the sky, striking a costumed cape in the face. As he struggled to his feet, apparently blinded, Amy recognized him as the smug asshole Trickster. His top hat seemed to be missing, though. Hopefully Crystal’s blast had destroyed it.

Unfortunately, there was now nothing between Amy and Noelle, and the monstrous cape was thundering forward again. Amy braced herself, ensured that the Bouquet construct was gripping her arm securely, and prepared to use her power the instant Noelle came inside her range. It was only about fifteen feet, so she would have to act quickly to incapacitate Noelle and try to counter her momentum before Amy and Bouquet got trampled.

Noelle’s unbelievable bulk loomed larger and larger in her vision, coming closer and closer. Fifty feet. Thirty. Fiftee—A blur of white and gold slammed into Noelle, forcing her backward more than a dozen yards.

“Run, Amy! I’ll hold her off!” Victoria was there, wrestling back three ravenous maws and straining against Noelle’s massive strength.

Amy ran forward, pulling Bouquet with her. She just had to get in range. “Vicky, I can—”

A tentacle snaked around Victoria’s ankle and yanked her off the ground. She swung in a wide arc that ended with her smashed headfirst into the ground. The dust settled, showing Victoria occupying a Glory Girl-shaped inch-deep crater in the ground. Even without the dust coating her costume, it was obvious that the hit had to have been hard enough to bring down her shield. The tentacle lifted her up and, despite her attempts to fly, drew her toward the slavering maw of a wolf.

“Vicky!” Amy’s shout was echoed by Crystal, who shot lasers at the tentacle. Carol didn’t say anything, but sprinted forward, slicing through limbs and tentacles with her glowing weapons and dodging others with well-timed shifts into and out of her ball form. Neither attack freed Victoria, but together they bought her enough time for her shield to reform and grant her the strength to rip the tentacle to pieces with her hands. She swooped low in order to kick Brandish’s ball form clear, then zoomed away herself.

The combatants paused to reassess each other, interrupted only by another blast of red lasers into Trickster’s face when Crystal saw him squinting up at her.

Noelle growled long and low at that, moving to put herself between Trickster and New Wave. Then, she coughed up two naked women. Two gorgeous women. Both looked like Vicky, one young, another middle aged like…

Amy nearly threw up when she realized what she’d been thinking. The second construct was a copy of Carol, not Victoria.

“Bring me Panacea,” commanded Noelle, and the two launched themselves in Amy’s direction. Carol’s clone was slowed by laser blasts from Crystal, then intercepted by the real Brandish in a violent clash of sparking swords.

The fake Vicky made it farther, almost reaching Amy before the real Victoria tackled her out of the sky in a tangle of limbs.

“Leave my sister alone!”

The two tried to trade punches, but ended up grappling instead. With Bouquet at her side it was a matter of steps to bring them inside her augmented range. She froze them in place, stopping the fight instantly. It only took a moment to repeat on the Vicky construct what she had done for Bouquet, placing herself at the center of the loyalty loop. That would stop her from trying to take Amy to Noelle, at least, and keep her from being ordered around by a monster.

With that resolved, Amy looked again, comparing the fake brain to the one in her sister’s head. Aside from that wired-in subservience and a weird set of emotional channels, there were only very minor differences between the two. Even that change Amy had made in Victoria’s brain had been copied over.

Oh. That.

Amy had promised herself that she would reverse the change if she got the chance, and now that chance was hers. It was harder than it should have been. Not because it meant throwing away Victoria’s love—Amy knew she didn’t deserve it. (And she didn’t need the real thing if she could comfort herself with a simulacrum.) Rather, she was afraid of the revulsion and anger she’d seen in Victoria’s face. Amy didn’t need her sister’s love, but she knew she wouldn’t survive her hate. That wouldn’t go away just by removing the attraction.

It wouldn’t be fair to Victoria to make her live with that anger for the rest of her life.

Mind made up, Amy fixed her mistake. She returned her sister’s attraction to the way it had been, and she removed the pathways that would make her angry at Amy.

That done, she released her hold on the construct.

At her instruction, the fake Vicky scooped Amy up in a bridal carry, and Bouquet clambered onto her back.

“Goodbye, Victoria,” Amy said, and Vicky carried them away, safely out of New Wave’s lives where she could not hurt them any more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we finally introduce Amy to the story. She is the focus of strong reader opinions, and I expect this to be a bit of a minefield for discussion. Please help me to keep this thread civil and appropriate. In particular, I ask you to please focus comments and discussion on Amy’s actions in Augment. This Amy has not yet done the things that put her in the Birdcage in canon Worm, nor any of what she later does in Ward. Those actions are not directly relevant to this thread and should be discussed elsewhere.
> 
> I will also state clearly that Amy’s choices here are morally reprehensible. I do not condone her decisions or outlook, even though I will try to keep her as close to her canon self as possible. This is a tricky point of divergence for her, where she has been partially broken by Bonesaw but hasn’t spoken to Jack at all and hasn’t seen Victoria nearly die from Crawler’s acid. I’m expecting a lot of you to have opinions about how I’m handling her character, and I welcome your feedback.
> 
> I will continue to post content warnings at the beginning of chapters that have problematic elements. If you don’t wish to read those chapters but are still interested in Charlotte’s journey, you should be able to follow the rest of the story well enough without missing too much by avoiding the New Wave subplot.
> 
> Thank you for reading.


	36. Topsy-Turvy 4.9

The Lovelace Memorial mall was upscale and had largely escaped major damage, even if it had obviously attracted looters. Still, simply by being a mall it brought back memories of Weymouth. Charlotte wanted very much to be somewhere else. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been able to bring that up with Noelle yet, because Noelle was arguing with Jack again. That was the reason Charlotte and two more of herself were huddled out of sight inside the entrance to Bed Bath & Beyond.

This was the third argument today. Or rather, it was the third in the time Charlotte had existed. Noelle had made her in the early afternoon, somewhere in the Trainyard. From what she’d gathered, Jack was at least five hours older than her. In the first argument she’d overheard, Jack had tried to convince Noelle that the only way to stop him from slicing up her other children was for her to maul them herself. He’d even tried to goad her into killing _him_. “I’m trying to give you a taste of what you could become. Aren’t you hungry for this?” he’d asked.

Charlotte mostly wished that Mother had gone ahead and killed him, but with the possibility that doing so might have sent her into a dangerous mindset, she couldn’t say for sure that letting him live was a mistake. Noelle had kept him from slaughtering the rest of them so far, but he needed to go. Charlotte had talked it over with her other selves, and they had briefly come up with a plan to kill or incapacitate the copy of Jack, but all of them had lost their courage when it came time to make a move.

It was the smell that did it. As soon as they got close enough, the other two had recognized the cologne scent of Jack’s power, and through them Charlotte had smelled it too. That smell brought the memories rushing back: a slash through a shade umbrella while she ran, a villain declaring that Jack would end the world, _Tattletale’s throat gushing crimson past pale fingers_. They hadn’t even needed to discuss it. The three had simply turned and walked the other way.

Now there was a different plan, but for the moment they could only wait and hide behind a too-flimsy wall.

“He’ll see through your ruse, you know,” Jack was saying. His smooth voice oiled into Charlotte’s ears, carrying with them that same hint of ammonia and cologne. “I didn’t become leader of the Nine through obliviousness.”

“Preserving the element of surprise isn’t worth abandoning my preparations,” Noelle answered. “Stop telling me to seek him out.”

“I’m not telling you to do that,” he denied. “I’m only warning you that he will guess where you are, and he will know that you aren’t the mindless, rampaging beast that you have tried to portray.”

“So will the Protectorate, eventually. The whole point is to buy time and establish ourselves.”

“Of course it is. But I excel at picking apart people’s strengths. When my counterpart comes to you, he will do it having taken time to prepare and fully confident that he can win. We should not allow him that time.”

Charlotte’s feet were getting tired, so she shifted a bit to lean on the wall for support. That led to her unintentionally jostling both of the others in the space that was far tighter than it should have been for three teenage girls. The other two Charlottes were exact copies, but she herself took up a lot more space than they did. Charlotte had always been heavyset, and self-conscious about that, but now she weighed easily four times as much as she had before, even comparing to herself before she started living on tasteless emergency rations.

It was actually quite nice. Her fear of getting truly fat had been based on the spongy, sallow flaccidness of great-aunt Ruth or the morbidly obese man she occasionally saw riding a motorized shopping cart at the grocery store. Charlotte’s new body was undeniably fat, but she had also kept a proportionate amount of muscle and could move just as easily as at the peak of her hockey training. It was the powerful fatness of a sumo wrestler, or maybe of those Pacific Islanders who always had such _presence_.

She liked it, that feeling of solidity and strength, of claiming space and owning it. She felt a little sorry for the other Charlottes who didn’t get to experience that.

Fortunately, the mall had a shop catering to people closer to her new body type, so she’d been able to find an outfit that mostly fit. Noelle hadn’t mentioned clothing specifically when she had listed the strategic benefits of their location, but Charlotte would bet almost anything that it had been part of the calculations. Nobody was naked anymore who didn’t want to be.

The size and strength were nice, but the thing Charlotte loved most about her new body? She could taste things again! Her sense of smell was no longer being commandeered with cape scents. They’d passed a soft pretzel place on their way through the food court, and even the residual aroma from the weeks-empty counter had been almost overwhelming after so long without. She felt a _lot_ sorry for the others for missing out on that.

Charlotte had lost track of the argument in her distraction, but something Jack said finally broke Noelle’s patience.

“Enough!” she said, and two of her lower heads brayed at the same time to underscore her displeasure. “I’ve told you that the Nine are on my list. If you are still so impatient to hunt down Jack Slash, go kill him yourself. I have other priorities.”

Jack didn’t respond, but Charlotte heard footsteps approaching. Seconds later his cologne and ammonia scent leapt into her awareness in that disorienting stereo that came from having the other two Charlottes on either side of her. Charlotte pushed off the wall she’d been leaning against and took several lumbering steps further into the store, making distance. One of the others followed her, while the second sank down and tried to shrink against the checkout counter. Her awareness of Jack’s scent split further with the increased distance between the two, and when he came into sight through the store’s entrance neither spot overlapped with his actual position.

His appearance caused Charlotte to immediately wince as she felt the edges of fourteen different blades bloom into existence around her. Or rather, inside her, since her body was so much wider than Jack’s and a majority of the knives hidden in his clothing corresponded to locations buried in Charlotte’s chest when superimposed on her.

She knew by now that those sensations weren’t real, that she wasn’t about to have her lungs minced into bloody pulp by the phantom razor blades inside them, but she couldn’t help the shudder that overtook her. For the next ten minutes or so she would be stuck feeling a hairs breadth from laceration with all of the information Jack’s power was sending to him.

She felt an anomalous urge to smile and wondered if the stress was finally getting to her.

Jack’s lips peeled back in a condescending smirk. “Ladies,” he said, then he spun on his heel and was gone. In time with his footsteps, the ghostly knives inside her swayed and swung, making Charlotte’s skin crawl.

“He’s gone,” said the other her, the one who was closest. “Let’s go.”

The one cowering by the register took a moment to stop hyperventilating and climb to her feet. When she was ready the three of them made their way toward Noelle.

The vaulted ceiling in the courtyard didn’t appear nearly as lofty with Noelle’s bulk reaching a significant portion to the shattered skylights. The strong ammonia scent that Charlotte received through her tap into the other Char’s power was still astringent, but not in the unpleasant way she remembered. Now it smelled like home, brought up thoughts of Mother.

Of greater interest was the distinct set of smells that Charlotte became aware of as they approached closely enough for her power to latch onto Noelle’s. Their creator could sense powers as well, but not with in the same way that Charlotte had been able to. Instead of the more normal smells that she’d become accustomed to as Bouquet, Noelle’s cape sense was like tasting a topographic map. The smells were less distinct from one another, though they had a texture to them that somehow felt like it should tell her something about what each power did. As the capes moved they left faint afterimages or gradients of texture. Adding that to what she got from the other Charlottes, the information should have synergized. It didn’t. It took a lot of concentration to try to correlate the input from the different sources, and trying earlier in the day had distracted Charlotte enough that she nearly got brained by an unpowered Merchant with a lead pipe. For now, she did her best to simply ride the wave of information and let it flow past her as they climbed a stalled escalator (in far better condition than the one at Weymouth) up to the second level so they could talk to their Mother more easily.

There wasn’t exactly a line, but they weren’t the only ones trying to talk to her. The three waited while Noelle took reports and gave instructions to two nonpowered clones who were in charge of communications. Apparently Noelle (or a mercenary clone) had retrieved a case of Shatterbird-proof radios from the ruins of Coil’s base. She’d given them to the dozens of clones that she left behind in locations she visited in her “senseless rampage” through the city, which meant she now had a decent grasp of what was happening and where.

“No sign of the Nine yet,” said the woman, “except for Crawler who is still battling his duplicates near the waterfront. Mannequin’s death seems to be confirmed.”

“That’s fine,” said Noelle. “Which way did Jack go?”

“Southwest, at least at first. Are you sure you don’t want someone to follow him?”

“Yes. Our resources are better spent elsewhere.”

“Something big is happening downtown,” the man piped up. “The Protectorate has gone on high alert over something, and the timing doesn’t match anything we did.”

“Keep me updated. If they continue to be distracted that’s all to our benefit.”

“Hookwolf and Othala were sighted nearby, and this mall is deep in former Empire territory. We think they know we are--”

“One moment,” Noelle cut her off. “Menja!”

“Yes?” called the giantess from where she was hanging traps from the ceiling.

“That’s enough on that side. Go see to the hallway outside PayLess.”

“Of course,” said Menja. She shrank down to a mere ten-foot height and handed some of her supplies off to the people assigned to help her before making her way out of the courtyard.

Noelle turned back. “What I really want to know is where my team is. Has nobody found them yet?”

“No. I’m sorry. We haven’t seen any of the Travelers aside from Trickster. We’ll keep looking.”

“Fortunately,” added the woman, “Trickster is finally asleep, and the swelling in his face has gone down. I expect he will feel much better in the morning.”

“Good. You’re dismissed.” As the two walked away, Noelle called down to some of those tending to her. “Bring me that second pallet.”

In response three figures strained to push a heavy wooden pallet out from the hallway leading to the food court. It dripped a pink fluid and Charlotte could smell a faint rancid odor even from where she stood. Noelle lunged and three of her heads tore into the expired food, swallowing it down in seconds.

When she had finished Noelle returned her attention to Charlotte and her companions. “You there. What do you need?”

Charlotte was still intimidated by dealing with a cape, even if it was Mother. She took a deep breath and borrowed strength from the solidity of her new body. “We had a suggestion,” she said, “which is also a request.”

Noelle cocked her head. “I see you came out with a Thinker power. Go on.”

Charlotte quickly added and checked off “Step 0.5: Make this idea sound smarter than it probably is” on her mental plan. She also made a mental note which texture in Noelle’s smellscape corresponded to something Thinkery, then continued speaking. “The Protectorate are sure to respond soon, and if the Nine weren’t taking their attention they already would have. We should take advantage of every opportunity to present a positive image. It would help to avoid direct conflict as much as possible by removing their incentives to come after you.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“So far you have released the majority of people that you made duplicates of, and have only kept a few for sustained cloning. Unfortunately, they are likely to consider anyone you retain to be hostages and prioritize their retrieval.”

“Your Thinker power tells you this?”

Charlotte shrugged in a way that she hoped looked affirmative, but she was spared the need to answer as Noelle continued speaking.

“It makes sense. Anyone they know about would be a disappearance, an abduction. And any confirmed instances would establish a pattern for them to accuse me of keeping others who are simply missing in the chaos. The question is, have they already noticed or would releasing them draw attention to the fact that they were missing in the first place? Also, would sending them back be visible enough a gesture to make a difference?”

The Charlotte to her left coughed. “My original was one of the first ones taken, and you absorbed her in full view of the Protectorate and PRT. There are enough of us running around the city by now that they can’t help but notice soon if they haven’t already.”

“I see.” Noelle blew air out of her nose, a gesture that was echoed by a snort or two from her lower heads. “Your power is incredibly useful. I’m skeptical that the tradeoff would be worth it.”

“That’s easily solved,” said the Charlotte on her right. “We have the same power. If we stay with you, you get both benefits.”

“Hmm.” After a long moment, Noelle nodded. “Yes, I think you are right.” She focused on Charlotte, pointing at her and the one on the left. “I’m charging the two of you with taking her back safely and making sure this gesture is understood, that it has the effect you predict.”

Long limbs reached up and lifted all three off the balcony. The two of them were lowered to the ground by the warm, almost feverish brown flesh, while the third was deposited on Noelle’s back.

“You others will stay with me.”

“Others?” asked the Charlotte seated on top of Noelle.

In response a massive surge of vomit flowed out of the closest four mouths, two Charlottes falling from each.

“I’m ensuring redundancy. You won’t be a single point of failure.”

The lizard-like head seemed to gag for a second, then it extended a long prehensile tongue that unwrapped to deposit another Charlotte on the ground. Unlike the others, this one was wearing the apron and scarf of her Bouquet costume, and she was twitching feebly in the fluid around her.

Charlotte stepped forward and lifted her weak and soggy self over one shoulder. Once again, she blessed her new strength and size.

“I’ll make sure she gets back safely, and that they know why you sent her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience, as well as your comments and encouragement. Unfortunately, my writing time has diminished a lot recently. I am not particularly happy with this chapter as it stands, but I think it’s time to just post it and move the story forward. I’ll do my best to keep the update rate reasonable.
> 
> I hope you all stay safe and healthy.


	37. Topsy-Turvy 4.c

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Brief Recap:  
> Wow, it’s been a month since the previous chapter. In case you forgot, this is what our intrepid heroes have been up to:
> 
> Charlotte got eaten by Echidna, and her clones have been busy!
> 
> One of them boosted Cherish, who messed with Noelle’s head in a way that made subsequent clones not hate their original selves. Aisha then shoved Cherish into a puddle of Crawler acid, so she’s gone.
> 
> Another clone boosted Amy, who used her newly ranged ability to kill Mannequin and to Master a number of Echidna clones.
> 
> Two clones ended up at the PRT building to meet Charlotte’s mom. One of them tried to kill her, while the other managed to stop that from happening.
> 
> A homicidal clone of Miss Militia managed to pass for the original and abduct the Wards team out of the PRT HQ.

Chris brushed the connection points with flux and waited for it to dry before soldering them together. There were only so many ways to use what was available in order to bypass the shattered silicone chips in his armor. He’d run out of parts halfway through and had to cannibalize the drones he’d designed for Skitter in order to get enough germanium. Still, his armor, his hoverboard, and his spark pistols were finally repaired from the damage Shatterbird had done to them.

He put the soldering iron down and stretched cramped fingers. “Done!”

“Well, goody for you, asshole!” said Trevor.

“Shit, sorry,” Chris apologized. “I was just talking to myself.”

“Yeah, fine. Ignore me, then. Just do your own thing--it’s not like I could use some help over here.”

Chris _had_ offered to help, before Shatterbird screamed and his own gear became mostly inoperable. It was all too easy for him to imagine how Trevor must have felt when nearly his entire Chariot loadout was reduced to scrap in a single encounter with Faultline. Apparently, a grand total of three pieces had remained in usable condition after extracting them from the fractured armor. Trevor had been upset enough to refuse working with anyone, and Chris hadn’t pushed.

“Look, I’m gonna get some food. After that I’ll be back to give you a hand.” Chris heard Trevor grunt something angry in response as he stepped out into the hallway and turned toward the kitchen area.

Sharing lab space with Trevor was several flavors of awkward on a normal day—as much as a normal had been established in the week and a half since he’d joined the Wards. His working style and personality was different enough that he clashed with Chris in a lot of minor ways, even before you took into account the bulky nature of Trevor’s recharging stations. His battery packs were able to contain an insane amount of energy in a semi-stable gel matrix that could be dynamically shaped without compromising its quad-phasic discharge, but the incredible field utility of that gel was offset by long charge times and a large footprint for the chargers in a lab that was already split between two tinkers.

On top of the practical concerns, nobody was at their best emotionally right now. Between Leviathan, Sophia, and now the Nine, it was a bad time to be cooped up with someone else. Chris could have dealt with that, though, adapted. He probably would have welcomed the other tinker’s presence and even considered Trevor a friend, if every interaction weren’t also tinged with the knowledge that he was a spy and a traitor.

The Wards had all voted, but in the end it was Chris’ vote that had mattered. He was the one who had visited Trevor’s home to recruit him, who had discovered the mysterious backer that Trevor was reporting to. More than that, he was the one who would be working closest with Trevor, reviewing his tech and monitoring his actions.

Chris _hated_ the distrust it brought into the team. It was bad enough that Sophia had been Mastered into betraying them—that was a constant fear in the world of capes, and there were protocols to mitigate the damage and save the victims. This wasn’t like that, where the fault rested clearly on the villains. This was a supposed hero intentionally working against the rest of them. Leviathan hadn’t just murdered Dean and Carlos, he’d also murdered the sense of unity that had allowed Chris to believe they were all in this together, heroes working to bring peace back to the city. Now he was always on guard, always considering his words for what was safe to say, always remembering who knew what.

It sucked.

The kitchen was empty except for Missy, who was slumped over a giant bowl of instant oatmeal. She spooned another glorp of it into her mouth. “Mornin’,” she mumbled around it.

Chris wrinkled his nose. “Did you seriously pour coffee on that instead of hot water?”

“Caffeine.”

Chris pointed at the empty oatmeal packet. “That’s peaches and cream flavor.”

“Mhm.”

“Ugh. Well, I guess eating something disgusting for breakfast is one way to be sure your day gets better afterward.”

Missy flipped him off, which Chris ignored while he grabbed a couple granola bars. He usually snacked on cereal after tinkering, but they only had powdered milk and he wasn’t going to subject himself to that.

He was halfway through the second one when the door alarm buzzed, followed shortly by Miss Militia’s voice calling from the common area.

He didn’t bother with a mask, just followed in Missy’s wake as she shuffled through a compressed stretch of hallway. Missy collapsed into the couch next to Lily, who seemed to have been studying a map of the city judging from the way it was spread across the coffee table. The other cushion was unofficially Dennis’ spot, so Chris took the spinny chair by where the console had been. The original computer had been taken away for forensics after the Undersiders broke in to access it, and the replacement had succumbed to Shatterbird’s song.

Miss Militia waited in silence. It wasn’t long before Dennis walked in and plopped onto the couch, and shortly after that Weld arrived with Trevor trailing behind him. Once the full team had assembled she glanced around to catch everyone’s eyes before turning to Weld.

“Formica, Los Angeles, Poodle, Twelve. Confirm”

Weld nodded and spoke over Lily’s quiet gasp. “Correct, Horse, Battery, Staple.” One by one each Ward followed suit, giving their personal passphrase. None indicated duress. They’d drilled protocols thoroughly after the Undersiders raid, but this didn’t feel like a drill. All eyes were on Weld as he stepped to the wall panel and connected to the central console to request remote confirmation.

“This is Weld in the Wards quarters. Can you please verify Miss Militia’s location and status?”

 _< Agent Tanner speaking,>_ came a male voice. _< Wait one.>_ Chris vaguely recognized the agent’s voice, but didn’t remember if it matched the name. After a brief pause the speaker continued. _< Elevator badge records and door biometrics confirm Miss Militia in the Wards area. Status nominal.>_

“Thank you. Weld out.”

Miss Militia nodded. “Well done. We have a confirmed Master-Stranger situation in the city, which I’ll brief you about shortly. I have been tasked with securing sensitive materials, and I need the help of the Wards team. This operation should not put us in proximity with the threat, but with the Nine in town we can’t take any unnecessary risks. Get suited up and ready to go. I’ll wait for you here and lead you to the garage. Once we leave the building we will be under eyes-on protocol.”

Missy practically leapt to her feet, her earlier lassitude forgotten. “Finally, we can _do_ something.” A twist of space and she was gone.

As the others filed out at a more normal pace, Trevor spoke up. “My armor’s gone. What am I supposed to do?”

“Bring what you have. I know your backup skates and a few other things are still approved. This is a non-combat operation, since we’re just retrieving some materiel. Your costume undersuit and whatever tech you have ready will be sufficient.”

Trevor grumbled some more under his breath, but followed Chris to the lab. Chris wasn’t really focused on what he was doing, so he switched some numbers around and entered the wrong combination on the keypad twice before getting the door open. Trevor shoved past him with some unkind words, and Chris tried not to fault him for it. Personally, going out on patrol without his tech would feel like going naked. To do that with the Nine and this new threat around would set anyone on edge.

\---0---

The interior of the truck, from the bench-like seats to the grab bars on the roof, had been covered with a blue plastic tarp to prevent any exposed metal from posing a problem for Weld. That made every fidget and shuffle sound like a rainstorm, and each pothole sent the six Wards bouncing against the draping material again, which is why Miss Militia was practically shouting their briefing back at them while she drove.

“They may be visually distinct, but the clones seem to retain at least some memories. More than Master-Stranger, this situation falls under hostile Thinker protocols. Assume that Echidna or her minions have knowledge of your identities and of PRT/Protectorate procedures. We will set our comms to local-only mode and isolate communications from Console until returning to the PRT HQ.”

Chris and the others made their adjustments while she continued. “We have three objectives. I will secure one, while you split up to retrieve the other two. Weld, please assign the teams.”

Weld was seated closest to the cab and furthest from the two tinkers on the team. Chris hadn’t had time yet to come up with a good coating for his tech, and as far as he knew Trevor hadn’t really tried. Which meant that the teams were basically a foregone conclusion.

“I’ll be with Clockblocker and Vista,” said Weld. “Kid Win will lead Flechette and Chariot.”

Yup. There weren’t many other ways it could have gone, and it made sense to split the new transfers onto different teams to help them integrate with the Brockton Bay natives. Vista and Clockblocker had such good power synergy that it was natural to keep them together. Chris wasn’t thrilled about the assignments, especially not about being in charge, but he didn’t have a better suggestion so he couldn’t complain.

It wasn’t much longer before the truck pulled to a stop and they piled out on a grassy rise overlooking the beach.

Chris had known that the Rig was large, but even crossing the forcefield bridge or entering the Protectorate HQ hadn’t really conveyed the scale of the structure—it felt like a building and those weren’t things that Chris thought about much. Standing in front of its mangled ruins was a totally different feeling.

Even lying on its side, the platform towered several hundred feet in the air. It was only about half as tall as the Medhall building, but that was its _smallest_ dimension. The four massive pylons that had supported the platform were substantially larger, their twisted, bent profile attesting to the violence that had brought the structure here. Leviathan hadn’t even touched it, yet the initial waves had not only battered through the force field and toppled the repurposed oil derrick but also tumbled it through the bay and tossed it ashore.

While the others approached on foot, Chris jumped onto his hoverboard and rose to scan the surrounding area. Out of habit he turned to report to Aegis.

Naturally, he was alone in the air. He was now the team’s only flyer.

“The beach is empty,” he said into his comm.

 _< Thank you, Kid Win,> _said Miss Militia. _< Come on down.>_

Up close, it was clear just how much damage had been done to the PHQ. The soaring arches were broken, the exterior walls bore foot-wide cracks in dozens of places, and many of the angles that ought to have been square were instead visibly skewed.

Miss Militia cleared her throat, and Chris focused back on her. “In yesterday’s engagement,” she began, “we discovered that certain Tinker effects can penetrate the Siberian’s invulnerability. The weapon that was used didn’t injure her, but it’s the best lead we have ever had to a weakness in her power. There is a good chance that either Armsmaster or Bakuda created something that operated on similar principles. In fact, that’s a possible contributing factor to Mannequin’s attack. We need to retrieve pieces of their tech in hopes that the Response Force coming with Alexandria will be able to use it against the Nine.”

Chris shuddered. He’d had nightmares off and on for the past week after finding out that Mannequin had broken into Armsmaster’s quarters. His mentor, or the man who would have been his mentor if he wasn’t such a terrible tinker that it was a waste of Armsmaster’s limited time, had been singled out by the murderer notorious for killing people who started to make an actual positive impact on the world. Alone, missing an arm, and without his tech, Armsmaster had still fought Mannequin off and survived despite horrible injuries that forced a medical evacuation.

That was a true hero. Chris wasn’t sure if he felt relieved that he wasn’t a good enough tinker to attract Mannequin’s attention, or despondent that he hadn’t been worth Armsmaster’s effort. He felt awful that he hadn’t contributed anything to keeping Armsmaster safe. He hadn’t even heard about the attack for over 18 hours.

“Don’t we have lots of Armsmaster’s tech at the PRT HQ?” Chris asked aloud.

“Yes, but not some of the older examples. Kid Win, you are most familiar with Armsmaster’s lab, so you will lead your team there. Bring back any complete or partial halberds. Weld, your objective is Bakuda’s control interface from her mask. It should be in the roof level evidence locker. Clockblocker and Vista know what it looks like. I’m going to hazardous materials storage to retrieve the bombs recovered from Bakuda’s workshop. Any questions?”

“Yeah, I’ve got one,” said Clockblocker. “How do we get in?” Chris followed his pointing finger to the fallen structure and realized that the side with the main entrance was flat against the sand.

“The closest entrance for your team will be the helipad. Kid Win, your team can enter through an emergency exit at the rear, or through Dauntless’ office. He had a large sliding glass door to exit from for fast response flights. I’ll go in through the maintenance ladders in the pylons.”

Everyone nodded, and they split up.

Given that Vista was helping the other team to travel, Chris was soon alone with Flechette and Chariot.

“Where to?” asked Flechette.

Chris paused, imagining the Rig’s layout. “I don’t really think that either of the entrances she suggested would get us where we want to go very easily. But we’re not limited to existing doors, right? You could cut a hole in the wall to give us a way in?”

“Sure. I would say that I don’t want to damage anything, but, well…”

“Yeah.”

“Where do you want it?”

“About there? Maybe?” Chris pointed to a spot about halfway up, close to where the third floor ought to be.

“By the big crack?”

“No, below it. And a bit to the left. Oh, wait, you mean that crack. Um, here.” Pulling out his spark pistol he aimed carefully and launched a crackling blue oblong that seemed to wade slowly through the air before impacting pretty much where he’d meant it to.

“Got it,” said Flechette. Before Chris could offer to take her up there on his hover board, she and already fired her arbalest and anchored a long chain into the wall right next to the scorch mark. A moment later she was pulling herself upward with acrobatic grace.

Chris turned to Chariot. “Need a lift?”

“I can do it myself!” he snapped. Bending down, he did something to his boots that sent a high-pitched whine from the wheels in the heel and toe. He skated forward and set one foot on the wall. It stuck there long enough for him to lift the other foot into place, then he shot upward, skating straight up the side of the Rig. He buzzed past Flechette, weaving around the cracks and architectural obstacles in his way.

Chris sighed and sent his hoverboard skyward, making sure to stay below Flechette so that he could keep both his teammates in sight.

“Here?” Flechette confirmed before slicing four lines through the wall with swift movements and pocketing the throwing dart she’d used.

“Damn, that’s useful,” said Chariot.

Chris hovered inside, discovering that he’d picked a spot slightly too high. They needed to descend about ten feet to reach the hallway he wanted. He flicked on his visor-mounted headlamps, and all three of them cracked chemical glowsticks before heading inside.

The green glow was a little spooky, and it didn’t help that they were walking on the wall instead of the floor. At least it was mostly level, but it was awkward to watch their footing. Doors had swung open and were hanging down into the hall, forcing them to duck under them. It was enough clearance that when nothing was in the way they each could stand normally, but only just. Dean would have been scraping his head.

Shit.

“We need to go a bit less than halfway down this hall,” Chris said. “Armsmaster’s main lab is close to the center.”

Getting that far required them to jump across several gaps made by intersecting hallways. Well, Flechette jumped. Chris hovered across, and Chariot just attached his boots to the original floor and rolled sideways. They’d only made it past two of those intersections when Miss Militia’s voice came over the comms.

_< Status?>_

_< We’re in,>_ responded Clockblocker. _< Just got to the evidence locker. Vista is a champ.>_

“We’re inside, but still making our way to the lab,” Chris reported.

_< Good work. There are two more things that need to be addressed. First, Weld, while you are there have Clockblocker and Vista grab any of Leet’s tech that is on the inventory. He’s a lot less predictable, but the possibility of it working is worth a few extra minutes to collect it.>_

_< Yes, ma’am.>_

_< Second, I want to emphasize that you are not to contact anyone who isn’t already on this channel. This is a non-combat operation, but it is still in support of measures against an S-class threat. Trying to circumvent these orders will constitute a serious offense. Chariot, this means you.>_

“Me?”

With sudden horror, Chris realized what Miss Militia was about to say. Why would she do this during an active mission? He turned to the side, hiding the motion as he drew the spark pistol.

_< We know you have been reporting to Coil, both during and outside of patrols. I am ordering you not to attempt to do that. In case you hadn’t heard, his death was confirmed yesterday at the hands of the Siberian, so you have no one to report to, nor anyone to shield you if you leave. That makes this much simpler—the Director and I will debrief you once the Slaughterhouse Nine are no longer an imminent threat, at which point you may attempt to justify your actions. Until that time, you will continue being a Ward like you have been pretending. Obey orders and don’t do anything that would risk all of our lives.>_

The click of the comm shutting off was deafening.

Chariot crouched, eyeing the path back outside and Chris hovering in his way. Warily he looked around at Flechette, noting her alert stance. Seeing that he was boxed in, Chariot’s shoulders slumped and Chris allowed himself to relax slightly.

“So ‘we’ is everybody, huh? Neither of you are surprised.”

In the silence that followed Trevor pulled off his mask and stared accusingly at Chris. “You’ve all been talking about me behind my back, I guess? Some team. And here I thought we were getting along.”

“What are you talking about?” demanded Flechette. “ _You_ were the one betraying _us_. You don’t get to act all hurt because—”

 _< Kid, are you guys okay?>_ Weld’s voice cut in.

Trevor ripped out his earbud and threw it away. It bounced once before dropping through an empty doorway into oblivion.

“Yeah,” Chris answered carefully. He kept his tone as casual as possible. “A little tense over here, but we…. We’re continuing the mission.”

Trevor scoffed at that but didn’t argue.

_< If you’re sure. We’ll finish up quickly and come meet you.>_

“That… wouldn’t be a bad idea, but we’ll be okay. This isn’t really the best place to hash out our grievances.”

 _< Might be a good reminder of the stakes,>_ muttered Clockblocker, and Chris was glad that Trevor couldn’t hear.

 _< Keep in contact,> _ordered Weld. _< I want an all-clear ping every sixty seconds.>_

“I’ll handle that,” Flechette volunteered.

Chris nodded, and the three of them moved on in uncomfortable silence.

Not that talking was any less awkward when Trevor finally spoke up to ask, “So what part of my life were you spying on that gave it away?”

“You’re accusing _us_ of spying?” Flechette demanded, incensed.

“Stop,” said Chris. “This isn’t the time.”

“Really? Because Miss Militia sure seemed to think it was.”

And that was the thing, wasn’t it? Chris didn’t have a good answer, but he really didn’t want to deal with it. “I’m not Miss Militia,” he finally said.

“But—”

“No. If you take a second to think, nothing has actually changed about the situation.” While Chris spoke he led the way down the hall. No reason to just stand there and hope the argument would end. They needed a distraction, and if there was one thing Chris was good at it was being distracted. Nice to see that working in his favor for once. “Your loyalties and reasons are still whatever they were, and we still know what you were doing. The only difference is that now you know your secret isn’t actually a secret. I don’t believe you were planning to sabotage us while we’re working against the Nine, and I don’t think you’ll do it now. So let’s get this done and worry about this mess later.”

He thought that was a pretty good speech. It lost something in the delivery, though, halting and stuttering as he had to focus on ducking under doors that hung down and skirting doorways that yawned underfoot. It was kind of unfair how Flechette could move around those obstacles so easily.

Trevor huffed. “Bullshit. This just shows I was right to keep secrets if you are going to go digging through my personal life.”

“Shut up,” snapped Flechette. “You don’t get to complain when you choose the villains over your own team.”

“Oh, yeah? And what would you have done? Coil did more for me and my mom than the heroes ever did. You don’t have a family to worry about, you can do what you want.”

Flechette bristled. “You’re trying to tell me that bouncing from home to home in the foster system is better than what you have? That it’s oh so hard to have a loving mother who—”

“Stop,” Chris cut in. “Please, just drop it. Chariot, if you need to be angry at someone about this, you can blame me. I figured it out when I came to recruit you at your house—you weren’t as good an actor as you thought. Nobody would have monitored you that closely if they didn’t already know you were spying on us.”

“Shit! And you didn’t say anything? You just let me believe we were becoming friends. Shows the kind of hero you are.”

Chris decided to just let Trevor have the last word. They traversed the next stretch of hallway with only quiet grumbling, passing another intersection that plummeted into the dark.

A dozen yards before they should have reached the lab, they encountered a more substantial obstacle. A ceiling-mounted sprayer had ruptured, filling most of the hall with a mound of containment foam. It was old, probably having happened when the building first landed here, so the air-exposed portion at least was definitely set, but Chris had no intention of getting glued in place inside a sideways maze.

“Can you cut a chunk out of that?” he asked Flechette.

She shrugged and used a throwing dart to slice off a bulging portion near the top. Chris noted belatedly that rather than draw a dart from her belt, she’d already been holding one in her hand. Was she expecting Trevor to turn this into a fight? Was it just caution, or had she noticed something he’d missed? Trying to ignore that worry, he tapped a gloved finger against the exposed surface. Around the edges it was fine, but further in it remained slightly tacky. If the middle was any worse than that, cutting their way through could be a mistake.

“Let’s go up one floor,” he said, pointing to the side.

“Really?” challenged Chariot. “You’re scared of some old foam?”

Flechette ignored him and followed Chris’ suggestion to cut a hole through the former ceiling (being careful to avoid the center line where the containment foam reservoir sat). There was a substantial gap for wiring and other utilities, but after a few feet they emerged through the floor of the next level. The walls didn’t align from floor to floor here, and they found themselves in the middle of a large conference room, the tables and chairs piled in a broken jumble below them.

The lack of a wall to stand on didn’t impede them much. Flechette cut a way forward into a room full of filing cabinets, a few of which even remained bolted in place. The rest had proved too heavy for the wall and plunged through into a dim space below. A quick glance revealed boring tile that gave Chris the impression of a cafeteria, but it wasn’t worth investigating. Another hole through the floor got them back into the original hallway on the other side of the foam blockage.

“This is it,” Chris said when they reached the lab a short distance later. The door over their heads was much more substantial than any of the others in the hall. He had his hover board raise him up to the electronic lock. Nothing happened. He tried tapping the screen, waving his glove up and down to the side.

“Problem?” Trevor mocked.

“Maybe. Normally it recognizes my armor and grants access automatically.” Chris popped off the cover, revealing a shattered control chip. “Well, that answers that. I don’t think the defenses are powered, but….”

Flechette nodded. “I’ll be careful.” She shot her arbalest into the two upper corners, anchoring a chain across the door at an angle so she could pull herself up to reach it. Her dart cut cleanly through the hardened alloy, and a two-foot oval of highly secure vault door crashed heavily to the lower wall.

It was followed by a rain of shattered coffee cups and assorted small tools: several wrenches, two micro-welders, a vacuum torch, and a precision mallet.

“Good job,” said Trevor. “Brilliant idea to cut in through the bottom.”

Chris had to admit that he was right. Something large was blocking the way up through the hole, and any pieces they cut out would just allow more items to fall through. He’d bet there were more than enough loose items in the lab to completely fill this section of hallway.

“Don’t worry,” said Flechette, poking her head partway into the hole. “I see a spot that’s clear of obstructions.” She leaned over and jabbed a dart into the door, letting it fuse in place, then used it as a handhold to support her weight as she dangled at full extension from the chain she’d draped across, cutting a new triangular hole closer to where the door met the floor. A few papers fluttered down through the new opening, but the gap was clear. Flechette cut grips into the side and hauled herself through. Chris hovered up after her, needing to rise farther than he thought to get a view and pan his headlamps across the wreckage.

It was almost physically painful to see Armsmaster’s meticulous organization reduced to this topsy-turvy mess. Chris could imagine the way his jaw would have clenched if he were there to see it.

“Do you know where to start looking?” asked Flechette, taking in the mountain of jumbled lab equipment, tinker tech, work benches, and everything else that Armsmaster had accumulated in his lab after however many years of service in Brockton Bay. There was clothing, an aluminum frame for a cot, multiple computers and at least twice as many screens. Shattered glass lay everywhere and was even embedded into anything softer than metal. Sifting through this to find the halberds would be a much bigger pain than Chris had thought.

“Maybe try that cabinet?” he suggested after a moment. “The one under the large monitor. I think that’s one of the places where he kept older projects.”

While Flechette moved to do that, Chris hovered upward to see if anything useful had been fixed in place securely enough to avoid joining the chaotic jumble. Two heavy workbenches remained bolted to the floor. One still had Armsmaster’s nanoforge and half the molecular printing assembly attached to it. He checked to see if anything was inside the drawers and cupboards on the new upward side of each bench, but everything appeared to have been flung out when the rig was rolled through the waves before coming to rest in its current state.

On the side walls there were three other doors leading off from the main lab. One was hanging open and revealed a cramped toilet. The other two were locked but bore labels marking them as “Clean Room” and “Archival.”

“Hey, Flechette,” Chris called down. “I think one of these might be what we want.”

“Good, because I haven’t found anything yet.”

She grappled up to his position outside the clean room door, paused briefly to tap her comm, then sliced cleanly through the lock.

“Wait a minute,” said Chris as she pushed through the sideways door. “Was that our sixty-second check in?”

“Yeah, why?”

Chris looked down toward the debris covering the main door, his headlamps highlighting what he already knew: Chariot wasn’t there.

“Oh, shit,” said Flechette.

“Weld, this is Kid Win,” Chris reported immediately, using his visor to open the comm channel. “We are fine, but Chariot is AWOL. He didn’t enter the lab with us, which was…” he glanced at Flechette.

“Three all-clear pings ago,” she said.

 _< Got it, Kid,>_ said Weld. _< Priority one is staying safe, priority two is completing our mission here. Keeping track of Chariot is a distant third. We can worry about him later.>_

 _< I disagree,>_ said Miss Militia, and Chris mentally kicked his stupid brain for forgetting that they had a Protectorate cape leading them today. _< We can’t afford to have a traitor working at cross purposes.>_

“I’m sorry,” said Flechette, visibly shaken by the anger in Miss Militia’s voice. “It’s my fault. I was focusing on the fact we were safe, not that we had him in sight.”

_< Save it for the after-action. For now, deal with what we have. Sitrep?>_

“We’re in Armsmaster’s lab. Still looking for the halberds.”

_< We collected Bakuda’s mask and a few of Leet’s items from the evidence locker and are about to leave the building.>_

_< Understood. Vista, you’ve used your Manton limit before to sense people’s locations. Is Chariot still in or near the PHQ?>_

_< One moment.>_ Vista started mumbling to herself before reporting, _< Yes, there’s an area I can’t affect. He’s almost directly below Kid Win’s position, close to the ground and moving seaward.>_

Miss Militia’s breathing was labored, like she was running. < _I’m only a short distance from central security. I’ll see if I can lock him in. Weld, take your team to intercept. I’ll join you. >_

“And us, ma’am?” asked Chris.

_< You two aren’t mobile enough to help. Keep to your current task and try to actually accomplish this objective.> _

She didn’t even wait for an acknowledgment before closing the channel.

“I’m really sorry,” said Flechette again. “I don’t know how I missed that.”

“I missed it, too,” said Chris. “It wasn’t just you. Even if it were, I doubt she’s as pissed as she sounded—the Nine just have everyone on edge. Let’s find what we came for.”

As it happened, the first halberd was extremely easy to find, being impaled partway through the wall in front of them. It was incomplete, and some components were obviously bent or broken in ways that made Chris’ fingers itch. After looking around through the much smaller jumble of parts and debris in this room, he and Flechette managed to gather two more partial constructions of the blade portion and most of another haft.

“Let’s check the archival storage, then we can leave,” said Chris.

Flechette nodded.

Before they even made it back into the main lab, though, there was a whining that started high and dropped in pitch until it was more a physical sensation than an audible sound. It cut out suddenly, and a few seconds later the lights flickered on.

“Gah!” shouted Flechette, who had been standing next to a bank of fluorescent lights in the room’s ceiling. Fortunately, Chris’ visor attenuated the fluctuating brightness so that the sudden glare was only uncomfortable, not painful.

 _< Hello? What was that?>_ asked Dennis.

“Power just came on where we are,” answered Chris. “Looks like just emergency lighting, though.” Only a few of the lights had turned on in the room.

_< Yeah, us too. Though it could just be the parts that were hardened against Shatterbird.>_

Oh, yeah. That would make sense.

 _< That hum was the forcefield going up,>_ said Vista, sounding satisfied. _< If Chariot’s still inside it he won’t be able to get very far from the rig until Miss Militia opens it.>_

“Is that… safe?” asked Flechette.

There was no answer. Maybe she hadn’t broadcast that? Chris couldn’t tell if he’d heard her through his comm or just because they were next to each other.

“I suppose,” said Chris hesitantly, which was as far as he got before a wailing siren cut him off. Sparks shot out around the lock of the door where Flechette had cut through. Another horn blared, much closer, accompanied by a recording of Armsmaster’s voice.

_< You are intruding in a secure area. Confirm your authorization within fifteen seconds, or you will be incapacitated.>_

“Oh, no.” Chris flew to the wall panel and, when it didn’t recognize the transponder in his glove, started frantically typing out his code.

_< Five seconds.>_

“No, no!” He banged on it with his glove again, then shot out into the main lab, dragging Flechette with him.

A crackle of electricity splayed across the doorway just behind them, followed by the _FWOOMP_ of containment foam rapidly deploying. A trickle dripping through the door became a stream, expanding as it fell onto the main lab door, spreading across the detritus that covered it.

A new horn sounded, and an identical announcement began to play from the main lab speakers.

_< You are intruding in a secure area. Confirm your authorization within fifteen seconds, or you will be incapacitated.>_

“Come on,” Flechette yelled at him, “We need to get out!”

Making room for her stand beside him on the hover board, he floated close to the opposite wall so she could cut an opening for them. Halfway through the slice there was a warning hiss and Chris shot back to the center of the room to avoid the spray of confoam from the reservoir she’d punctured.

“Dammit, I got it on my gloves,” she complained.

_< Five seconds.>_

“No time!” Chris gripped her waist and shot up to a point about five feet below the rear wall where he hovered as far away as possible from both the ceiling and floor. A network of webbed lightning crackled across all the surfaces of the lab, followed by a _FWOompsh_ as three different reservoirs discharged confoam from the ceiling; two more, the ones closest to Chris and Flechette, spurted feebly around the throwing darts bonded through their nozzles and failed to deploy more than a weak stream of the stuff. One of the darts had Flechette’s gloves stuck to it.

“Okay,” said Chris as he watched the lower half of the lab become a giant glue trap. “I think we’re clear.”

The universe decided to spit in his face then, when multiple turrets popped out of positions in the ceiling and floor and started shooting.

“Do not jinx us like that!” said Flechette. “Get me to the floor.”

Chris barely heard her, too busy dealing with the sudden revelation that the spit of the universe was blueberry pudding. Or some metaphor like that, because what each of the turrets had fired at them was a stream of blue oblong shapes that crackled as they sailed through the air.

“Armsmaster used my spark design?”

Chris allowed Flechette to physically pull him out of the way of the first volley and through the hole she’d cut, still too stunned to do anything but gape at the slow-moving projectiles. A second round of sparks missed him by inches as he tried to peek back into the lab.

“Kid, get it together.”

“Did you see that? He used my tech! That focusing coil stabilizes the shape for long distance coherent transfer, and the dual wavelength induction… he said it wouldn’t work for his halberd, but I thought that meant he didn’t think it was good enough. But he used it in his lab security, instead.”

“Weld, we almost got caught in some automated defenses,” said Flechette. “Stay away from high security areas.”

“…think it’s probably because they are inherently non-lethal. The modulated discharge channels around nerve potentials instead of through them, so…”

_< Yeah, now you tell us. You guys okay?>_

“No injuries. Kid is stuck in tinker babble, but he’s slowing down now, so probably just spooked. How about you?”

“…but he actually used it. Do you think he used anything else I designed?”

_< Some fire doors slammed shut when the power blinked on here. We’re trying to find an alternate exit. Miss Militia, do you copy?>_

“Is your comm working, Miss Militia? … Hello?” Flechette tried.

Silence.

 _< We’re almost outside. We’ll find her and find out what’s going on,> _said Weld. _< Be safe.>_

Flechette turned to Chris, and motioned for him to turn off his comm.

“Are you focused again? Because I need to ask you about something that’s bothering me.”

“Yeah, I’m… yeah. Sorry.”

“Miss Militia said we weren’t mobile enough to help, but your hoverboard can easily carry two. Maybe we can’t move around as well as Vista, but we’re faster than Miss Militia is on foot. Between that, prioritizing pursuit of Chariot, and losing contact, this feels really off.”

Chris nodded slowly. “I suppose, yeah, it kind of does.”

“You’ve known her longer than I have. Is this how she acts under high stress?”

Chris thought about the Bakuda bombings, the hostage situation at Forsberg. He thought about Leviathan. “You’re talking about a Master effect.”

Flechette just waited. Okay, time to take this seriously.

“She’s acting like herself. Body language, speech patterns, she seems no different. Well, a bit angrier.”

“Are these the calls she would have made on her own, in your experience?”

“I dunno. But remember, she’s the one who told us about the M-S situation in the city. Why would risk tipping us off by warning us about it?”

As soon as he asked the question, though, he saw the answer.

“Maybe because—” started Flechette.

“No, I get it,” Chris interrupted. “We have no verification that the cloning works the way she said, if that’s even what happened. Using only local comms made sense in that context, but cutting us off from console is super sketchy.”

“It’s a big call, though. Do we suspect this strongly enough to disobey direct orders and try to call console? Breaking a prescribed M-S protocol is the best way to open ourselves up to manipulation.”

It took a few seconds to decide, but they felt like an eternity. “If it works the way she said it does, the primary concern is accepting incoming calls that appear legitimate. Placing a call to console is a minor risk, compared to you being right. I’ll take the blame if it goes badly.”

A quick adjustment with his visor and he’d switched back to the standard channels, setting it on speaker mode so that Flechette could hear as well.

“Console, this is Kid Win. We have a--.”

He didn’t get another word out before being interrupted by a sharp voice.

_< Kid Win. Where are you? The Miss Militia who took you and the other Wards is an imposter.>_

“I’m sorry, before I answer that, can I get a confirmation that this is actually the console?”

<No. Pre-set M-S codes don’t work right now because the clones retain memories of the original. We’re relying on procedure and multi-stage authentication, the latter of which is not feasible over this channel. Your Miss Militia is a clone, assumed hostile. Is she with you now? Where did she take you?>

“I… is there any way that you can verify this to me?” asked Chris.

_< Patching in the Protectorate channel now.>_

_< This is Alexandria. I’m here with the real Miss Militia. Where are you?>_

Chris met Flechette’s wide eyes. Everyone knew that voice.

_< Miss Militia speaking. Did she attack you? Are any of you hurt?>_

This Miss Militia sounded just as angry as the one with them.

“We’re inside the Rig,” Chris finally conceded, hoping that his lingering doubts were unfounded.

“No one is hurt,” added Flechette. “Yet, at least. The two of us are still inside, but Miss Militia was on her way to meet the others outside to chase down Chariot. She… revealed we knew he was a spy, and he tried to run.”

 _< We’ll be there in less than two minutes,>_ promised Alexandria. _< Keep in contact.>_

“How do we warn the others?” Chris asked Flechette, after he’d muted his comm. “If we broadcast anything she’ll hear it too.”

“How fast can you get us out there?”

“Let’s find out.”

The next twenty two seconds had entirely too many close calls for such a short span of time. Rocketing along the bottom half of the hallway to avoid dangling doors, swooping around corners much too fast for comfort, and jinking sideways twice when Flechette nearly lost her footing without the advantage of Chris’ magnetic boots. The door they found was closed and locked, but Flechette made short work of it, and they were clear before the mound of confoam that spilled out of the recessed compartment expanded enough to block their path.

Chris had been prepared for an attack or standoff when they burst through the door, so it was a bit disorienting to find a deserted beach on the other side. The sand was empty except for their own footprints leading from the PRT vehicle that now sat on the other side of the shimmering blue forcefield. The area the field enclosed was massive, but on the scale of the oil derrick it didn’t leave that much additional room.

“Quick, go over the top!” urged Flechette. “Vista said Chariot was heading seaward.”

Chris sent them skimming above the concrete structure, slowing when they reached the opposite corner to peer down at the still water spanning the distance between the ruined walls and the force field that was now absorbing or repelling all of the waves’ energy.

The slight vertigo from staring down the sheer drop was nothing compared to the telltale warping of space around Chariot, who was skating desperately along the side at what Chris’ visor helpfully identified as 93 mph. It wasn’t helping much, as every bit of progress he made seemed to take him back further toward the roof and helipad. He was swerving all over, avoiding Clockblocker’s reach and testing Vista’s imposed boundaries. The twisting sightlines as Vista compensated made Chris’ stomach knot unpleasantly.

“Vista!” called Flechette. “Weld, stop!”

Her shout got their attention, and Chariot took advantage of the distraction to power through a temporary corridor and disappear into the supportive understructure.

“What was that?” demanded Vista. “You let him get away!”

Chris swooped lower on his board, still ferrying Flechette.

“Miss Militia is an imposter,” he said. “We contacted Console and—”

“Wait, why?” Weld interrupted. “We were warned that outside comms could be vulnerable. How do we know you two aren’t compromised now? Miss Militia gave full M-S authentication.”

“This isn’t going to sound credible,” said Flechette, “but if you wait about sixty seconds, you’ll see proof. We talked to Alexandria, and she’s on her way with the real Miss Militia.”

Weld shook his head. “Delaying us could be the point. We’ll continue, and Clock, count it down. If they’re wrong, freeze them.”

“Did you say that just because my name—”

_BLAM._

_Bla-BLAM._

The report of very loud gunshots cut off the rest of Clockblocker’s words, and Vista immediately warped a path for all of them to the top of the support pylons. Looking down, Chris saw Miss Militia crouched on a lower strut taking aim with a long rifle. When he followed the line of the gun to her target, he saw a prone figure on the sand beside one of the pylons. Trevor.

Trevor’s mask was off again, and he was trying to drag himself into the sandy depression in the pylon’s shadow, desperate for some sort of cover. Chris’ visor zoomed in to show him that one of Trevor’s skates had been shot to pieces and was leaking something dark out onto the beach. At this distance the difference between oil and blood was guesswork.

_BLAM._

Trevor’s other skate burst apart with Miss Militia’s shot, and his leg jerked violently. He screamed.

“Dammit, they were right!” muttered Weld.

Chris felt paralyzed. He hadn’t actually expected “hostile clone” to mean… that.

Dennis was the first to react. “Get me down there, Missy!”

Weld’s delayed “What? Wait!” didn’t stop her from nodding and twisting space in front of them. Dennis stepped through and tapped Trevor just in time for—

_BLAM!_

—the next shot to ricochet off his frozen chest and plow a furrow through wet sand.

Weld leapt through as well to land beside Dennis, blocking Trevor’s body with his own.

 _< Collaborating with the traitor, now?>_ asked Miss Militia over their comms. _< You don’t protect the enemy.> _She shifted her aim slightly. _< Move, unless you want to get the same treatment.>_

Space warped and Dennis reached through to freeze her. He was too slow, or maybe she just reacted that fast, shifting her weapon and firing through the shrunken distance. The flashbang grenade buried itself in the sand at Dennis’ feet before erupting in light and sound, spraying sand in all directions. He fell backward with a cry, halting in midair at an impossible angle as he reflexively froze his costume. Bakuda’s mask fell from his open grip.

Weld ignored the explosion, leaping forward through Vista’s shortcut to grapple with Miss Militia. That move completely backfired when she yanked his arm and pushed him into the metal struts at her feet. He fused with them on contact, fixed in place by his arms, chest, and neck. Miss Militia stepped on his head and jumped back along the path he had taken, landing next to Dennis and Trevor before Vista could revert her power. She snatched up Bakuda’s mask and slipped it over her face. In a single smooth motion she formed her weapon into a grenade launcher and loaded it with a small sphere pulled from a bag at her waist, and suddenly that weapon was pointing at the three remaining Wards.

“Stop!” That shout came from above, and all eyes were drawn to Miss Militia (the real one, hopefully) being lowered to the beach by Alexandria. The two heroines touched down on the sand just outside the shield, about fifty feet from where Fake Militia stood.

“Hello, Hana,” shouted the fake with false cheer. “Come to see someone do things right, for once?” The voice changer in the mask must have been disabled, because her words only sounded a bit muffled compared to the robotic monotone Bakuda had used.

“Let them go,” ordered Real Militia.

Alexandria didn’t say anything, just floated to a point directly above Fake Militia and started punching the force field over and over. The impacts were strangely silent, despite the obvious power being brought to bear. On the third hit Chris saw the shield ripple as energy redistributed across the surface, but it didn’t look any weaker.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get your precious Wards back,” said Not Militia. “Just not the traitor.”

“No. There’s no reason to kill him.”

“I want to.” The hungry desire in her voice was chilling. “You do, too. Right, Hana? I’m you, after all, so I should know. He’s a symbol of the compromises forced on us by a broken, corrupt system. You hate the orders to accept villains into our ranks, to work alongside the likes of Assault. This boy was a stalking-horse to catch Coil, but Coil is dead now. You have no use for him any more.”

“You can’t kill him!”

“You’re right. Not until he unfreezes, at least. Why else do you think we’re still talking?”

“Hey!” whispered Missy. She’d set down all of the Leet tech she’d been carrying. “We can stop her while she’s distracted.”

Chris shook himself. That was right, he wasn’t just a spectator to this. They were Wards, not just Chris and Missy and Lily. He wasn’t going to stand by and watch an imposter murder Chariot in front of him.

“Warp me down behind that pylon,” whispered Flechette.

“Put me on the other side,” added Chris. “We’ll flank her.”

While Vista arranged their paths, being careful to keep the distortions out of Evil Militia’s sightlines, the confrontation continued down below. Chris had missed some of it, but it was melodramatic enough that probably didn’t matter.

“You hate the orders to hold back when you could end every villain in this city.”

“I follow my country!”

“You try, but your country won’t let you protect or serve it. How many times have you been forced to act as a celebrity instead of a soldier? The one and only time you wore that uniform unironically was an abject failure, because they denied the use of adequate force and you didn’t do what it took.”

“Those records are sealed,” warned Alexandria loudly, still pounding away at the shield. It looked slightly dimmer to Chris, but not like it was about to fail. Vista signaled him, and he hovered through her compressed space to a shadowed nook behind a large metal strut.

“Oh?” he heard Murder Militia ask. “You don’t want these impressionable Wards to hear about that? Which part? That USPARACOM borrowed their new Protectorate head when she was barely older than them? Or that they sent a covert team to decapitate the Yangban? Or maybe that they utterly disgraced themselves and retreated with severe losses, completely forgetting their objective, purely because we weren’t allowed to actually use the force at our disposal?” As she spoke her weapon shifted to something resembling a missile that was larger than one person ought to be able to hold. Radiation sensors in Chris’ visor spiked.

By this point Chris had managed to hover into position for a clear shot, and he made eye contact with Flechette who he could see peeking around her own cover on the opposite side. She nodded at him, and he loosed a spray of sparks from his pistols, some directly at Angry Militia and others bracketing her in case she tried to dodge.

She didn’t. Whether it was the click of his trigger mechanism or just the soft crackle of the blue sparks, she responded immediately, spinning to face him. Her weapon shifted to a thick rubber truncheon that she used to beat the sparks out of the air, then shifted again to a large handgun that she aimed at his face. She pulled the trigger.

Instead of having his skull blown open, Chris was witness to the unprecedented sight of Miss Militia’s gun misfiring. When she looked down in surprise, she saw one of Flechette’s arbalest bolts fused through the mechanism. The gun dissolved into green mist and the bolt fell to the ground. When it reformed, though, the gun had a prominent hole piercing its side.

Clone Militia snarled, shifting her weapon to a rifle, a shotgun, to the handgun again, to a knife, a different pistol, then back to the same handgun. All of the others were pristine, but the gun Flechette had hit seemed to have been permanently damaged.

“I _liked_ that gun,” she said.

Flechette shot another bolt and Evil Militia dodged. This time, though, it wasn’t aimed at her. The bolt caught the edge of Clockblocker’s boot, and just like it had in testing, her power canceled his time stop. Clockblocker’s costume unfroze, and he fell the rest of the way to the sand. He turned the fall into a controlled roll and immediately leapt for Militia, who was already off balance.

At the last moment, she manifested her power as a large breaching tool interposed between herself and Clockblocker. The weapon froze under his fingers, and Clockblocker’s momentum carried him into it with a heavy impact that sent him tumbling to the ground again.

Clone Militia scrambled for distance and held out her hands to grasp a gun that failed to appear, her power remaining locked into the form of a now-immobile breaching tool.

“Good news, Hana,” she said, fishing something out of her pocket. “You don’t need to worry about trying to contain that classified story after all.” She tapped two rings together, and an immense explosion of sound rocked the base of the Rig. It was like Triumph’s shout, but dialed up to 11, and Vista screamed as the ledge under her feet crumbled, dropping her into the web of support spars. At the same time the force field flickered and weakened, the generator having apparently suffered damage in the blast.

Chris’ attention was pulled back to Fake Militia when she spun in a circle, flinging Bakuda grenades in all directions. Four or five were flying right towards him, and he fired his spark pistols as fast as he could, hoping desperately that he could shoot them out of the air.

The real Miss Militia screamed high and long, watching her clone raise the rings again.

One of the bombs was intercepted by Chris’ sparks and knocked off course, but the others sailed cleanly past. His mind flashed through the horrible deaths he’d seen and heard of. Was he about to be frozen, glassed, or sucked into a black hole?

He tried to pull the triggers one last time, but the spark pistols dissolved in his hands, becoming a shifting green cloud that floated in front of his face. He looked up at the bombs that had been only feet away, and which had also morphed into green mist.

Each one of the clouds streamed away, pulled towards the real Miss Militia who was just now staggering to her feet. A large one came from Flechette’s direction as well, her arbalest gone. With a bit of awe, Chris realized that _every_ weapon in the area had been converted to energy.

A ball of mist shot out, passing unimpeded through the force field, and planted itself in the sand beneath the imposter’s feet. There was an explosion, and her corpse dropped in a wet heap.

Chris watched Miss Militia. She met his eyes briefly, and a swirl of green appeared in front of him that coalesced into his spark pistols. He caught one out of the air, missing the other as it fell to the sand. When he looked up again she was back to staring at… that.

Overhead the force field finally shattered. Alexandria swooped in and plucked Missy from where she dangled among the spars, depositing her safely next to Dennis.

Over the next several minutes, more Protectorate heroes arrived (Battery and Rime first, after which Chris didn’t really pay attention); Weld managed to detach from the metal he’d bonded to, leaving gaping divots and sharp edges across the entire front of his body; and, finally, Chariot unfroze with a cry of pain at being shot in the leg. Three field medics triaged their injuries. Alexandria took concise reports from the most stable of the Wards.

Through it all, Miss Militia stared at the spot where her clone had died, her power dancing, writhing, for hundreds of feet around her. She ignored Battery and even Rime when they tried to talk to her.

Even without his trouble with numbers, counting all the things that were wrong would have been beyond him. Chris didn’t even try. All he knew was that more than anything else, he hated that watching Miss Militia’s new power gave him ideas for tinkering a modularly adaptive gun. The cost of that insight was too high.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry that my current schedule does not accommodate nearly as much writing, and this story has been severely slowed by that. I’m not sure what things will be like going forward, but I’ll try to keep the chapters arriving in a reasonable timeframe. Thank you for your support and for engaging with the story.


	38. Tumble 5.1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brief timeline of events so far:  
> • Sun, June 5 (1.1-1.8) Charlotte rescued from Merchants, sleeps at Palanquin  
> • Mon, June 6 (2.1-2.a) Power testing with Faultline and Undersiders, Burnscar attacks Palanquin, Aisha captured by Cherish, Amy runs away from home  
> • Tue, June 7 (2.4-3.2) Truce meeting, Jack Slash, Shatterbird  
> • Wed, June 8 (3.3-4.5) Coil Operation, Noelle released, Charlotte captured; Lassie rescued; Noelle rampages, Jack and Crawler cloned; Noelle mastered, Cherish killed  
> • Thu, June 9 (4.6-5.1) Wards abducted and rescued, Laura attacked, New Wave cloned, Charlotte released

Charlotte had almost enough energy to spit out the awful stickiness in her mouth. Practically, that meant that as horrible as her stomach felt, her body simply didn’t have the reserves to vomit like she felt she needed to. It was like the time she’d gotten food poisoning from a bagged salad: perpetually nauseous no matter how much her whole body emulated a wrung-out washcloth. This was worse, though, accompanied by a rhythmic pressure on her bladder and intestines, like an angry cat was headbutting her over and over.

She really ought to open her eyes and see what was happening. And yet the nightmares had finally faded, and she just wanted to be immobile for a while, think about something besides Levia—

She spasmed, the memory of silt and salt leaving her retching and gasping for breath. Her head spun for a dizzying moment, and she was fully upright before realizing that she’d been dangling head downward before.

“Here, it’s okay,” someone said. “I don’t know what it was like in there, but you’re out now.”

Charlotte’s eyes fluttered, and she focused through the fatigue and the clenching of her stomach to try to make sense of where she was.

The ground was asphalt, cracked and riddled with potholes. A broken yellow line was trying hard to prove this was a road, not just a long-abandoned parking lot. With the black surface radiating the accumulated heat of a long muggy day, it wouldn’t be remotely comfortable to sit or lie on. Even so, it looked about twelve billion times better than standing. Charlotte was pretty sure she could fall asleep on it right now if the person propping her up let her lie down.

That person had _really_ big hands.

“Just take a minute to breathe,” they said. It was a woman’s voice, with an annoying tone to it in a way that sounded somehow familiar. Probably her imagination, since Charlotte was sure she didn’t know anyone who could apparently throw her over their shoulder and walk across the city.

Charlotte closed her eyes and waited as she slowly started to feel … not better, but at least less like a bucket of limp noodles.

“Just let me know when you’re ready to move again. You can walk, or I’m happy to carry you.”

Charlotte nodded minutely, trying to avoid anything that would trigger more dizziness. She tried to wipe her face clean, but her hand was stickily wet and didn’t improve things. Patting herself, she found that her clothes were sodden as well. The fabric bunched uncomfortably around her elbows and in the thighs of her jeans.

“Sorry we don’t have any water,” the person said, from behind her this time. “We’ll try to find somewhere to let you get cleaned up and changed.”

Wait, how had she done that? The woman hadn’t moved, but that was definitely her voice. It was identical, with the same intonation and annoying nasal quality to it. Charlotte forced her eyes open and looked over her shoulder at – at herself.

She screamed, or tried to anyway. It came out more as a strangled gasp. She pushed away, but the other person (another clone?!?) was still holding her up by one arm, and she merely lurched into an aborted face plant that wrenched her shoulder backward before she was lowered the last few inches to the asphalt. Charlotte pushed weakly at the ground and managed to roll over onto her back, allowing her to stare up at her evil clones.

There were two of them. The first one, who had been lurking behind Charlotte, was the body snatcher type of clone—as close to identical as would make no difference, ready to kill her and take up the Charlotte shaped hole left in the world. The second, who had been gripping her arm, was the nightmares-come-alive type. Her face was Charlotte’s but covered with painful-looking acne even worse than Stephan’s from Pre-Calc. That face was perched on top of the inflated body of Violet Beauregarde, just before the Oompa Loompas arrived to roll her out of the factory. Charlotte couldn’t help shuddering at the imagined sensation of her body swelling into a bloated Beauregarde blueberry, a frightful impossibility from her childhood suddenly become a horrifying reality before her eyes.

“Look,” Blueberry Clone said, “I get that waking up in Empire territory like this is scary, but we’re just cutting through on our way. In fact, the sooner you get back on your feet, the less likely we are to run into anyone.”

This was Empire territory? Things just kept getting better. Glancing around, Charlotte didn’t recognize anything that would tell her where they were, but she did see some white wolf head markings designating the street as belonging to Fenrir’s Chosen. Great. Figures that her evil clones would bring her here. With the way her luck was going this week, Hookwolf would appear around the corner any second. Which direction would he come from?

“Please, Char, calm down before you hurt yourself,” her mirror clone said.

That didn’t help her calm down, but Charlotte had to admit that was a pretty clever way to phrase a threat, when you had someone’s own clone ready to break their bones. She felt strangely proud that her other self had thought of it, but it was honestly a pretty niche situation, and therefore not likely to come up often. No need to take notes.

Mirror Clone shifted, looked like she was getting ready to say something else, and Charlotte forced herself to stop stalling. She would have tried to run if she weren’t still feeling completely spent, or if she didn’t outnumber herself, or… well. Running away didn’t seem like a viable option for step one of plan Don’t-Die-At-Your-Own-Hands, so maybe she should try talking to herself.

“What do you want?” They hadn’t killed her yet, so they must want something, even if it was just to look at her face when they tortured her or something similarly cliché.

The clones exchanged a glance. “We aren’t entirely sure yet,” said Blueberry.

“We were trying to figure out the specifics earlier,” added Mirror, “but we should probably talk about it on the way. We don’t want to run into anyone, especially in this part of town.”

Charlotte knew better than to follow where a kidnapper wants to take you, but getting “rescued” here by members of the Chosen would not be an improvement. She was feeling noticeably better now, less dizzy and less fatigued. She was still exhausted, but more in a “shambling zombie” sort of way than the previous “immobile corpse” status, so if she could stall long enough to recover more from whatever it was that had been done to her, she’d probably have a better chance to escape.

“Okay,” she said, and reluctantly accepted a hand up from Blueberry.

Their pace was glacial. It was tiring to walk through the ruined streets, but with every block Charlotte felt her energy levels creep back up a bit more. She wasn’t sure if she should be trying to go faster or to slow down and delay arriving at whatever destination they had.

Charlotte didn’t have enough breath to spare for conversation, and she wasn’t sure what she would say anyway, so she didn’t try. Mirror and Blueberry seemed unhappy about being in Chosen territory, and didn’t say much either. When they did talk it was about immediate concerns like “Watch your step,” or “Did you hear that?” or “Shouldn’t we have gone left?” Every time one of them spoke, it grated in Charlotte’s ears. It was like hearing herself in a recording, but without the ability to blame speaker distortions. She knew it was her own voice, but she hated the way it sounded so much more nasally and less mature than she did in her own head. If that’s what she sounded like, maybe it was better to talk as little as possible.

The windows they passed started to be light from within by the occasional flashlight. Whether that was because more people lived here than where she’d woken up, or because the sun had finished setting and it was getting dark enough to really need extra light, she couldn’t say. She was starting to feel slightly more herself now. Oh dear, that was an unfortunate way to say it. A quick glance down confirmed that she was wearing the same thing she’d had on when she got sucked inside Noelle, whereas the other two Charlottes were in completely different clothing that actually looked clean and dry, not like it had been soaked in cloning juices for… however long it had been. An hour or two, given the way dusk was turning into night all around them.

Good enough. She would stop entertaining the thought that she might be a clone too. If it came up again, she’d deal with it then. Or just freak out. Either way, it would be later.

“Stop,” said Mirror, coming to a halt in front of the street they’d been about to turn down. “You smell that?”

“You both do,” said Blueberry. “Like marinara sauce, right?”

Now that they mentioned it, Charlotte did notice faint scent that reminded her of pasta night. Belatedly, she realized that the minor ammonia scent she’d been ignoring wasn’t just surrounding her or stuck to her clothes, but concentrated in the vicinity of her clones. There was something else faint mixed in with it that hadn’t registered in her mind—it was apparently her own scent, but she’d become inured to it by its constant presence. When she concentrated and tried to put a name to it, the closest comparison she could come up with was plain yogurt. In her clones it was present in and admixture of Noelle’s power. Did she smell like ammonia too, and just couldn’t tell? Did not smelling it mean she was right about being herself and not a copy?

Mirror peered into the dim street lined with apartments. When she spoke it was almost a whisper. “I don’t see anything, do you?”

“No,” answered Blueberry, just as quietly.

There were two yellow lines spray painted on opposite buildings, which looked slightly fresher than the graffiti around them. The road itself was severely damaged and dotted with water-filled potholes. Broken or fallen traffic cones peeked out of the puddles, presumably to warn people they were there. A few more of the orange cones were scattered haphazardly about on the road and up against the brownstone apartments lining it. It wasn’t obvious what the danger was they were cautioning against. 

“We should be out of Chosen territory, so it’s probably not one of their capes?”

“Doesn’t mean anything,” said Blueberry. “We’re still on their border, basically. And we’re almost to the crater lake where that meeting was, which is somewhere we know all of the city’s villains have been.”

“Go around? I’m not eager to meet a mystery cape right now.”

“Yeah. We still only know what half the Nine smell like, so this could be one of their other members. Not worth risking.”

Charlotte agreed. Better evil clones than Mannequin or Crawler. If one of them was watching right now, there was no way she’d be able to outrun either of the others. She focused on the marinara scent.

“It smells close,” she muttered, “and above us.” It did, but more importantly that statement got her clones to look up. They both stared up at the roof line, backing away into the middle of the road. While they did so, Charlotte stepped as lightly as possible into the shadow of the building. There was a set of steps leading down to a garden level unit, and if she could just hide there, she could get away from herselves _and_ from whichever villain was nearby.

She barely made it two yards before her plan unraveled. Something caught her foot, tripping her, and she tumbled to the ground, feeling more tugs against her skin as she fell. The rough asphalt scraped at her hands, but she barely noticed through the fear as a giant blob of marinara sauce leapt off the roof and landed right in front of her with a crash.

“Char! I mean, Bouquet!” shouted one of the clones.

Charlotte looked up and found herself face to face with an enormous gorilla. She pulled on her slowly returning energy reserves and rolled away just as it brought its fists down to pound the road where she had fallen. She felt the impact through the ground, more than enough force to have pulverized her if she’d been hit. Its arms swung wide then, swishing above her in a move that would have launched her into the wall if she’d been standing. It pounded the ground again, ignoring her as she crept away.

More marinara smell approached at a run, and a short blonde woman in a Victorian dress dashed around the corner.

“Stay back!” she shouted.

Charlotte recognized Parian’s doll mask, and allowed herself a tiny bit of relief that at least they hadn’t been caught by the Nine. Parian was blonde and white, but had reportedly wanted to be a rogue enough that she’d refused the Empire’s recruitment attempts. And yet… here she was right next to the territory of one of the Empire’s factions and using her puppets to attack trespassers.

“Sorry, sorry!” said Mirror. “We don’t want any trouble.”

“Then why did you cross the border?”

“What border?”

“The one right there.” Parian pointed to the yellow paint, then faltered a bit as she traced a line along the ground between the two lines. “There were traffic cones set up before, but I haven’t had a chance to put them back up since Crawler ran through here earlier today. Anyway, you aren’t welcome here.”

“Sorry,” said Mirror again. “We didn’t know.”

“Now you do. Leave.”

“Um, Parian?” said Charlotte, deciding to take a chance. “Can I please stay? They’re trying to kidnap me.”

“What?” squawked Mirror. “No we’re not.”

Parian edged closer, keeping her gorilla between them, and peered under its arm at Charlotte. After a few glances back and forth between her and the mirror clone, Parian said, “Looks like a family matter. I don’t want to get involved.”

“We’re not kidnapping you!” said Mirror. “Is that what you thought? God! Why not just talk to us?”

“Right. Trust my evil clones to tell the truth.”

“We’re taking you to the PRT building,” said Blueberry. “Why else did you think we were going this way?”

“I don’t even know where—"

“Wait,” interrupted Parian. “PRT. Clones. Are you capes?”

Charlotte glanced down and noticed that her scarf was dangling away from her face. Not that she’d have wanted the gross vomity cloth anywhere near her mouth, but Mirror and Blueberry weren’t wearing masks either.

Their hesitation seemed to be enough for parian. A swirl of marinara accompanied a dozen long ribbons unfurling from behind Parian’s back. They darted through the air and wrapped around Charlotte’s arms and legs, lifting her into the air and tossing her away. She flew most of the way across the street, right into Blueberry, who managed to catch her somehow. She staggered a bit in the process but didn’t fall.

“Capes can’t come here. I don’t care if are heroes or villains or anything else. You try to enter, I’ll fight you.”

“Sure, sorry, we’re going,” said Mirror. “Come on.”

Charlotte didn’t get a chance to object, with Blueberry simply slinging her over a shoulder and walking away down the road. That gave Charlotte a perfect, if neck-straining, view of the gorilla picking up Parian so she could perch on its back while staring them down as they left.

When they got to the next intersection they turned back north to move further away from Parian’s protected neighborhood.

They’d only gone a few feet—just enough to break line of sight back to Parian—when Mirror came to an abrupt halt and turned to confront her.

“What the heck, Char? Are you just paranoid from being inside Noelle that whole time? Why call us evil? I’d think if you could trust anyone it would be yourself!”

“Cut her some slack,” said Blueberry. She swung Charlotte upright again and set her down. “I didn’t think about it before, but the last thing she saw was all those Miss Militia clones trying to kill us. And you remember Genesis outright saying that Noelle made evil clones. I can understand why she’d be skeptical.”

“Ugh. Fine! Just… just hear us out. _Talk_ to us. We’re you, after all.”

Charlotte didn’t know what to say. She finally settled on “This is so weird,” hoping that she’d come up with something more intelligent soon.

“Let’s keep walking,” said Blueberry.

Charlotte had to push herself to keep up, but she was feeling dramatically better than after she’d first regained consciousness. Now it was more like she’d pulled an all-nighter and then played two periods of a hockey game. Tired in more than one way, sore all over, but enough energy to keep going.

“Are we really heading to the PRT building?” she eventually asked.

“Of course.”

“Why?”

Mirror glanced at Blueberry. “Your plan.”

Blueberry nodded. “It was the best I could come up with for getting you free and somewhere safe. That’s where you were trying to go before this whole clone thing, right? We convinced Mother—I mean Noelle—that she’d be better off giving you back voluntarily as a show of good faith, so that the heroes didn’t think she was keeping hostages. So she spit you out and sent the two of us to escort you back.”

“And… you really don’t want to kill me?”

“Of course we don’t!” objected Mirror. “I think you’re great, and I remember being you. In some ways I _am_ you, despite being a new person. Why would I want to hurt you?”

Her vehemence was undercut by the way Blueberry was shifting awkwardly, as though stifling an itch. Charlotte took a few steps away from her.

“You okay?” asked Mirror.

“Huh, what?”

“I was just assuring our original that we don’t want to kill her. Anything you want to add?”

“Oh. Yeah, sorry. Whatever she said. I can still feel what Parian is sensing with her power, and it’s really distracting. Along with everything else, she’s got it infused through her dress, and it feels like it’s rustling and pulling inside of me. This is going to suck until it wears off.”

Okay. Whatever. Charlotte decided to just assume that wasn’t a bizarre excuse to cover homicidal impulses. She didn’t think it was something she’d have come up with, so it probably wasn’t just something her clone thought up, right? Charlotte didn’t trust them yet, but it did seem like they were going in the direction of the PRT building. If they decided to take her hostage when they got there, she’d still be better off than she was stranded with them in a mostly deserted part of the ruined city.

Blueberry kept twitching strangely as they walked, which lent support to the idea that she was getting weird sensations from whatever her altered power was. Or that her brain and nerves were just as screwed up as the rest of her bloated body. Or, conceivably, that she was suppressing urges to reach over and strangle Charlotte, but probably not. She hadn’t tried it yet, after all.

It was fully dark by now, but they were transitioning into the portion of the city that had gotten attention from repair crews, so it wasn’t any harder to walk on the mostly-cleared roads. They occasionally passed other people outside after nightfall, but gave them a wide berth. Those others did the same, keeping their distance from the three girls. Sensible.

They finally came out onto Union Avenue, the main thoroughfare for this district. A quarter mile down the road, Charlotte could see bright lights like the kind construction crews used. The white brilliance bathed the road, illuminating a PRT checkpoint. The lights also ruined her night vision, and she tried to block them with her hand. Some way beyond the checkpoint, more lights shone around the squat building that housed the PRT HQ. They were nearly there.

Five silent minutes later they were approaching the checkpoint. The PRT officers were alert, and right on cue two of them stepped forward to challenge them.

“Halt!”

“What is your business here?”

“We… we need a safe place to stay,” called Mirror.

“There is a shelter two streets that way. This area is restricted due to an ongoing operation.”

“Wait,” said the officer’s partner, putting a hand on her shoulder. “All three of you step closer into the light. Slowly.”

They did, and suddenly both officers had weapons in their hands.

“Clones!” one yelled, and activity from behind the parked vehicles showed that they had the attention of the entire squad. Before Charlotte could even react she was flanked by officers on both sides.

“Hands on your heads,” they ordered, and Charlotte complied. The officers didn’t advance or say anything else, just stood there waiting for something. About ten seconds later it became apparent what that was when a man in orange and yellow flew overhead trailing honeysuckle, coming down to land behind Charlotte. Another cape vaulted over one of the PRT vans to land in front of them, emanating a mildewy scent like shower mold. Charlotte didn’t recognize either of them.

The officers approached then, producing handcuffs.

“You are not under arrest yet, but we are required to restrain you until you’ve been cleared by the crisis team,” they explained, quickly applying the cuffs to Charlotte and Mirror.

“Davies, grab the Changer-Brute restraints,” one called from where he was looking at Blueberry’s massive wrists. When those had been retrieved and applied—a thick ratcheting cable of some sort—the shower mold cape prowled up to them.

She was stocky and muscular, with leather pants and a loose chain mail top. Her dark brown hair emerged from under a metal helm in more than a dozen thin braids that looped into each other. Fine metal tracery covered her eyes.

“I’m Wieldmaiden,” she said in an accent that sounded Danish to Charlotte. “What is your purpose here?”

“We were sent to deliver a message,” said Mirror.

Charlotte sagged. That was the sort of line an evil clone delivered right before they murdered their original in front of the heroes. She’d been foolish to hope they’d been telling the truth.

Wieldmaiden seemed to think along the same lines, tensing as she asked, “What is the message?”

“Noelle, Echidna as you’ve called her, is willing to cooperate. She sent us to return Bouquet as a demonstration of good intent.”

Wieldmaiden’s eyes flicked to Charlotte. “You are Bouquet? The original?”

Charlotte nodded. She was pretty sure that was true.

“What do you think, Gigs?” Wieldmaiden called to the honeysuckle cape behind them.

“We’ll get them inside with the others,” he answered. “Tangle can get started on vetting them until Alexandria gets back.”

“Right.” She put a hand to her ear. “This is Wieldmaiden and Gigaton with three more of Bouquet, one claiming to be the original. Please ready some interview rooms.”

Charlotte’s mind stutter-stepped over those words. “What do you mean, ‘three _more_?’” she asked. “Three more? Do you mean there’s other copies of me beyond these two?”

Gigaton scoffed, which didn’t make her feel any better.

It was Blueberry who hesitantly answered, “Um, about that. Yes, there _might_ be a few more of us. Of you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Charlotte had multiple brushes with death during her introduction to the cape scene. Not only did she survive, but thanks to Echidna she managed to do so several times over! Here is a summary of the living Charlottes (at least the ones that have appeared in chapters) as of the beginning of Arc 5. 
> 
> NOTE: Clones created prior to Cherish mastering Noelle in 4.4 hate both themselves and their original, and are indicated by an asterisk*. Clones with an altered appearance and power are indicated with {braces}. Numbering is arbitrary for the purposes of this list only.
> 
> • Original Charlotte is being escorted to the heroes by Char1 and Char2{sumo sized; listens in on Thinker aspects of powers}  
> • Char3* tried to kill her mom, but was stopped by Char4{twisted face, lupus-like marks; ???}. Both are in custody at the PRT HQ.  
> • Char5* and Aisha got perma-whammied by Cherish and were last seen together.  
> • Char6* boosted Othala to fight Mannequin and requested an Empire hit on her family.  
> • Char7{severe keloid scarring; ranged dysregulation of powers} decided to visit her grandfather for advice.  
> • Char8 was mastered by Amy Dallon.  
> • Nine more (Char9-17) are currently with Noelle.  
> • Others???
> 
> Charlotte may have the distinction of being the most-cloned person in the city, but a lot of people, capes and civilians alike, now have one or more duplicates. Clones of the capes listed below have appeared on screen, though not all survived the various battles.  
> • Sundancer*  
> • Miss Militia*  
> • Crawler*  
> • Jack Slash*  
> • Menja  
> • Night  
> • Brandish  
> • Glory Girl


	39. Tumble 5.2

Tangle, the Protectorate Thinker wearing what looked like a half finished macamre project, had quickly verified Charlotte’s claim of being the real one. (She was surprised at just how relieved she felt when he’d squashed those niggling doubts). He’d also assured Wieldmaiden and Gigaton that neither she nor her two clones harbored malicious intentions, so their handcuffs were removed and the heroes left.

With the promise of somewhere nicer to stay, Charlotte followed an exhausted-looking young woman with a PRT badge out of the bare interrogation room and up a flight of stairs to a small office that had been converted to “guest quarters” by pushing the desk against the wall and unrolling a sleeping bag.

“I’m told that your mother is in the building,” she said. “I’ll go let her know you’re here. There’s also a shower down the hall, and I’ll bring you a change of clothes. Would you rather get cleaned up first or see your mom?”

“I’ll shower after,” Charlotte said. “Thank you, Agent….” She glanced at the nametag, but it was flipped around backward so that instead of a name and photo it was displaying a list of emergency phone numbers.

“No, not ‘Agent,’” she said, fixing her tag. “Not yet, at least. I’m Shayla Cochrane. Just support staff, so ‘Miss’ is fine.”

Then Miss Cochrane was gone, leaving the door open to allow the emergency lighting to shine in from the hall since the office Charlotte was in still had shattered bulbs. A single officer in body armor stood guard at the end of the hall. Charlotte guessed that was normal, and that someone hadn’t been posted there specifically to keep her from wandering.

Her clothes were still soggy and gross, so she sat in the hard plastic chair outside the door instead of the cushioned office chair. It was uncomfortable, but she could deal with a little discomfort while she waited.

Discomfort led to annoyance, and as the wait lengthened annoyance gave way to worry. What was taking so long? Had something happened to her mom? Was she asleep already and they’d decided not to wake her? Had Miss Cochrane been wrong about her being in the building? Or worse, was she avoiding Charlotte? Was she scared of her daughter now? Charlotte was a cape now, and beyond that her mom had no reason to trust Tangle’s verdict.

Finally, after at least twenty minutes of fidgeting under the eyes of the guard, the stairwell door opened and Laura Raimi emerged. She was escorted by someone who, going by his clothes, looked like another member of the support staff.

“Mom!” Charlotte leapt to her feet and met her halfway, collapsing into an embrace that did far more than any shower could have.

“Hey, bug. You’re safe. You’re safe,” her mother soothed as the tears Charlotte had been holding back finally emerged. It was a soft cry, one of relief, and it felt cleansing. “You’re safe,” she said again, and Charlotte believed her.

“I’ve heard some of it already,” Laura said quietly after a moment. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

They moved into Charlotte’s office and sat on the sleeping bag, backs against the desk. Laura’s escort, a Mr. Ramirez according to his badge, stayed in the hall out of easy earshot.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” whispered Charlotte. “And not just because of how many times I almost died. When they grabbed me off the street, I knew I probably wasn’t coming back. That wherever I ended up, however long it lasted, I’d probably… I just…. And what if, after all that, you didn’t….” She trailed off, unwilling to actually say any of the things she’d been trying so hard not to think.

“Oh, baby. I am so, so sorry that happened. That, and all of it.”

“Yeah.”

“But Charlotte, I promise you, you are my daughter now and always. I’ll be here.”

Charlotte sniffled. “Thanks, Mom. I love you.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Eventually, Laura spoke again.

“It really is a string of miracles. If you had been delivered from the Merchants, it would have been enough. If you had escaped the villains and helped to save Miss Militia’s life, it would have been enough.”

“Mom.”

“If you had only been able to call and speak with me on the radio, it would have been enough.”

“Mom, stop. I’m not in the mood for a Dayenu moment.”

Laura persisted, ignoring her. “If you had been returned to me merely alive, it would have been enough.”

Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Mom, fine. Dayenu. Can we be done for now?”

“And If the Lord had brought only one daughter back to me, it would have been enough.”

Charlotte stiffened, pulled away. “Wait, what do you mean? They told you I’m the real Charlotte, didn’t they? Mom, I’m not just a clone. I’m really me.”

“Yes, they did tell me that.” Laura smiled reassuringly. “Both the PRT and the other Charlottes did, in fact.”

“You mean you talked to the clones already?”

“To the two who were here this morning, yes. I just came from talking to one who arrived with you and is more heavyset. I still need to meet the other one who came in with you.”

That’s why she took so long coming down? Charlotte had sat in the hall waiting while her mom had gone to comfort Blueberry?

“But why?” Charlotte didn’t care that her voice came out in a whine. “They’re clones. They aren’t _me_.”

“Just because those other Charlottes aren’t you doesn’t mean they aren’t my daughters.”

Charlotte’s heart dropped into her stomach. She was replaceable. A commodity, even in her own family. “So you didn’t care if it was actually me who came back.”

“Of course I care. You are my little girl, Charlotte. My love for you isn’t diminished just because I have other people to care for, too. I will love all the children I’m blessed with, even if I wasn’t expecting any more.”

“I need to shower,” she said, trying not to sound bitter. “And you have another daughter to go see. Apparently.” Yeah, she wasn’t doing a good job hiding her bitterness.

Laura didn’t argue. “I’m so, so glad you’re safe. I love you, Bug,” she said. She squeezed Charlotte’s shoulder as she stood up, then followed as Mr. Ramirez escorted her away, presumably to give the same speech to Mirror.

Charlotte wiped her eyes. She sat there until Miss Cochrane came back with a change of clothes and a towel.

Charlotte stood, yawning. Time for a new plan. Nothing ambitious: step one, find the showers. Step two, use all the soap in the building until she felt better. Step three, deal with it when she got to that point.

\---0---

Showered and dressed, Charlotte quickly decided that step four needed to be “find some food and pretend it tastes good.” Which is how she found herself sitting in the cafeteria with a plate full of canned pasta rings in red sauce. It was like Spaghetti-O’s but some licensed brand, so they were shaped like the logo of a corporate team based out of New Haven. She didn’t recognize it.

She was nearly done when someone sat down across from her. She didn’t have to look up to know it was Tangle. His formaldehyde scent was distinctive, and it was not something she wanted to be around while eating. She put in a token effort to hide her grimace, for the sake of courtesy, but he was a Thinker. It wasn’t like he wouldn’t figure it out.

“Kind of ironic, isn’t it,” he said, setting down his own plate. “The PRT advertising for a non-government cape team.”

Charlotte shrugged. “It’s a disaster. You take what you can get.” Five more bites, and then she could leave.

“You look like you could use some sleep.”

“Apparently I’ve just slept for something like twenty seven hours, so I should be good for a couple days.” Three bites.

“Look, I appreciate the effort at politeness, but we both know you don’t want me here. I’ll get to the point. I’ve talked to a few others who Echidna has taken and then released. I know it’s an ordeal in there, on top of the whole getting eaten and then cloned thing. Current theory is that the hallucinations are induced to model the same fear-based brain patterns as your trigger event, so your clones will end up with your same power.”

“Okay.”

“Point is, whatever you saw was something Noelle’s power chose to show you, so you’re free of that now. Plus, you’ll actually be asleep instead of the immersion sim, suspended animation thing going on inside Echidna. Do what you want, but sleep could do you a lot of good, and I’d lay money on it being a dreamless night for you.”

Well, that was good news, at least. Charlotte returned to her little office and lay on top of the sleeping bag. She couldn’t bring herself to wrap it around herself. The warmth and closeness were too reminiscent of being entombed in Noelle’s hot flesh. It didn’t take long for her to fall asleep.

As it happened, Tangle was wrong.

Charlotte woke well before dawn, vomiting all over herself from the nightmares that just wouldn’t stop.

Feeling shaky and gross, she started trying to clean up the half-digested meal that had fortunately landed mostly on the slick nylon of the sleeping bag rather than anything important that might have been in the office. After a few minutes Miss Cochrane had arrived and taken over, sending Charlotte to shower again.

Standing under the lukewarm stream of water, she tried to banish the nightmares from her mind. Her stupid subconscious refused to let go of her encounters with the Slaughterhouse Nine. It continued replaying the horrifying scenarios it had dreamed up, solidifying them in her waking mind with every repetition until they almost started to feel like memories instead of night terrors.

She’d dreamed of dying. The panicked feeling of suffocating in Fog’s caustic miasma, choking on her own blood. The sudden cold when one of Jack’s phantom blades punched through her heart. The thunder of too many feet as Crawler barreled towards her in the dark, jaws gaping.

She’d dreamed of being _changed_. In one she’d felt her own mind stolen from her as she fell into absolute, slavish devotion for Cherish. Knowing she’d been Mastered but not caring. Or rather, _preferring_ it. In another dream, she’d experienced the terrible, disgusting joy of watching two long tentacles unwrap themselves from around her torso, some cape forcing her body to reconfigure belly fat into inhuman limbs. As she’d reached out with them to touch and boost the capes around her, the overriding sensation had been one of satisfaction that _finally_ she would have a skinny waist.

As bad as those had been, though, she preferred them to the one that had finally woken her up. She’d dreamed of hovering over her grandfather’s apartment on one of Rune’s platforms; of Othalla’s nutella scent washing through her and out her fingertips in a cascade of orange flames; of straining to throw just one more fistful of fiery rage as Rune bore them silently away, out of range.

There were monsters in this city. After living in Brockton Bay for sixteen years, Charlotte was accustomed to fear; she was used to burying her fears of encountering villains. After meeting half of the Slaughterhouse Nine it was little wonder that she would have nightmares about them. She was unprepared for the idea that she could become one of those monsters herself. Her subconscious clearly had a poor opinion of capes, and didn’t care if it painted her with the same brush.

When Charlotte had finally toweled herself off and gotten dressed in yet another new outfit, it was nearly 5am, so she felt justified in not even trying to fall back asleep. She’d take sleep deprivation over more nightmares. However awful reality became, it wouldn’t measure up to the terrible things she’d dreamed up in the night.


	40. Tumble 5.3

Miss Cochrane went with Charlotte to get breakfast. Apparently it was up to Charlotte to decide about a mask, and she’d opted to go without. She wasn’t here as Bouquet, today, and if someone wanted to know what she looked like, there were apparently four other copies of her running around the building. A mask would probably draw more attention than its lack, just like Lisa had said at the mall--before she’d died, a gaping slash in her throat spilling puddles of red across the concrete, sharp cologne scent piercing—

Charlotte cut off those thoughts. No mask. It was that simple.

The cafeteria was open and surprisingly busy despite the early hour. Not full, but there were people at every table and four ahead of her in line for the food, which consisted of an offering of oatmeal, scrambled eggs, and yogurt. Charlotte didn’t think she could stomach any of those things, with their slimy texture. Instead, she skipped the warm food area and found some crunchy granola. The only milk available was that nasty powdered stuff her family had bought off and on over the years whenever money was especially tight. She’d always avoided it in the past, but since she couldn’t taste it any more, it would be easy to convince herself it was the real thing. Silver linings. She also grabbed some dehydrated apple slices, because the other option was raisins. She wasn’t _that_ hungry, no matter how tasteless they might have become.

Tray loaded, she made for a table near the back wall that would be out of the way. Halfway there, she stopped stock still. Already seated at that very table was another Charlotte, who was waving at her. It was Mirror, or another identical clone. Probably Mirror from last night, since she was seated diagonally from Blueberry. The girl had her back to Charlotte, but there wasn’t anyone else who would take up most of a bench by herself or need to push it back so far from the table. The two were accompanied by some PRT escorts, along with another girl who turned around to see who Mirror was waving to. She was wearing a caricature of Charlotte’s face, with an off-center jaw and a twisted nose, and her skin had lupus-like patches all over it.

Charlotte didn’t want to think about why they had apparently chosen the same table she’d been aiming for, didn’t want any more reminders of what the past several days had brought. She spun around, looking for empty spaces.

“Is there anywhere else we can eat?” she asked Miss Cochrane.

“Perhaps. It would be better to stay in the cafeteria if we can,” was the answer.

Charlotte nodded. She could deal with it, wouldn’t make more work for her escort. She selected a spot on the other side of the room, with only one other person at the table. She forced herself to sit with her back to the room so she wouldn’t be staring at her evil clones while she ate. It wasn’t comfortable to leave her back exposed, but she’d smell them coming if they tried to approach.

Why were they even allowed to walk around? The memory of being attacked by a wave of Miss Militia clones was fresh and painful in her mind. The PRT obviously knew about all that, and yet they were letting these clones just do their own thing? All on the word of some random Thinker… who had also verified that Charlotte was the original. Damn. So she couldn’t just throw his judgement out the window.

Fine. As long as she didn’t have to interact with them.

Charlotte finished her food quickly, then sat there feeling jittery while she waited for Miss Cochrane to eat. She could tell the woman was trying to finish up, and she didn’t want to be an annoyance, but she couldn’t stop her leg from bouncing nervously. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want—

Someone cleared their throat.

“Mind if I sit?”

Charlotte took in the PRT officer standing by their table holding a tray. She wasn’t sure if he was being polite and just wanted a place to eat, or if he actually intended to talk to her. Or to Miss Cochrane, of course. That was probably more likely. It…didn’t really matter anyway. The answer was the same.

“Go ahead?”

The man sat and started spooning oatmeal on top of a piece of blackened toast. Charlotte didn’t recognize him, at least not until she read his name off the badge, which he’d helpfully tilted in her direction. Simon Laramie.

“Oh! Um, hi.”

“Hi, there. I’m Agent Laramie.”

Why was he acting like they hadn’t met? He’d protected her all through the fight with the Siberian and with Echidna. Sure, she hadn’t seen his face behind the dark visor of his field gear, but… oh. Right. No mask.

“My name’s Charlotte.”

“Good to meet you, Charlotte. Are you settling in alright? The past couple of days have been rough for a lot of us.”

“I… yes. It’s good to be somewhere safe. You weren’t hurt, were you?”

“No. Not me. Hear I have that new hero Bouquet to thank for that, after she stalled the villains long enough for Militia to get a shot off. That was well done. Brave, too.”

The praise was nice to hear, even if it was undeserved. She’d had no idea what she was doing in the fight, and her actions had gotten her captured and cloned. Instead, she focused on the first part.

“Not you? So, others were hurt?”

Laramie nodded. “Itoga got beat up pretty bad by his own clone. Docs say he woke up last night, but I haven’t seen him yet.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He’ll recover. Maybe even soon if we get some decent med supplies shipped in.”

“I hope so,” said Charlotte. “Give him my best. Was there… anyone else?”

Laramie didn’t answer for a few bites. “Lost a couple squaddies to the Siberian. Only knew one of ‘em well. Honestly, we got off light. It’s the Nine, and she’s worst o’ the lot.”

Charlotte didn’t know what to say.

“Good news is, that Bouquet lady might be the key to bringing her down. From what I saw, it looked really promising. Even if not, though, she’s got my thanks.”

His piece said, Laramie fell silent and focused on his meal. Charlotte belatedly noticed that Miss Cochrane was finished eating. Charlotte stood, and her escort followed suit.

“It was nice to meet you, Agent. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

Agent Laramie grunted, waving her away. Charlotte followed Miss Cochrane out of the cafeteria with only a brief glance across the room at her clones.

Back in the office she’d been assigned, Charlotte requested and received a packet of information about joining the Wards program. “Your mother got a copy yesterday,” said Miss Cochrane. “You’ll have an opportunity to discuss it with her before meeting any of the decision makers. Normally I could promise you a meeting the assistant director today to ask any questions, but with everything that’s happening right now you may need to wait a few days.”

“Okay.”

“You can ask me anything you want in the meantime. I don’t deal with that side of things normally, but if I can’t answer your questions I know most of the office staff and should be able to track down accurate information for you easily enough.”

“That’s kind of you. I don’t really want to take up all of your time, though. I’m sure you have something else to be doing instead of babysitting me.”

Miss Cochrane laughed. “ _So_ many somethings! But with the majority of our computers destroyed thanks to Shatterbird, and a lot of the physical paperwork destroyed in flooding, most of my usual tasks aren’t useful right now. I’m more than happy to help.”

“Thanks. I guess I’ll just read through this for now.”

“Sounds good, Charlotte. I’ll just be down the hall. Yell if you need anything.”

And then Charlotte was left with only stack of colorful pamphlets to distract her from her thoughts. The sleeping bag looked inviting, but she was not in the mood for more nightmares. Mindless reading and propaganda appreciation it was!

\---0---

In exactly the opposite of what she had been hoping for all week, talking to her mother had put Charlotte into a bad mood. After several hours to herself, Charlotte had looked up to find her mom at the door of her bedroom/office, and Laura had swept in with hugs and caring and a listening ear and everything that she needed. It was perfect and right, except that Laura had insisted on constantly reminding her that those expressions of love were now being split five ways. Five very carefully equal ways, with no preference or precedence given to the person who was her _actual daughter_!

 _“One of them saved my life yesterday,”_ Laura had said, as if it justified anything. _“She ran for blocks to get here in time.”_

Yes, that act was worth gratitude. Even Charlotte could admit that it wasn’t something an evil clone would do, and she would probably be able to bring herself to thank the one who had done it. But was that worth letting the copy usurp Charlotte’s place in the family?

And all of that completely ignored the fact that Laura’s life was only in danger due to the actions of another copy! But did Laura recognize that? Of course not! The clone who’d tried to stab Charlotte’s mother was already all but adopted.

 _“She’s suffering right now. If you were the one who had been twisted inside, enough to attack your mother, I’d want to be there for you, too. All of you are my daughter.”_ Gah! It was insufferable, and wrong, and completely unfair. They’d already stolen Charlotte’s appearance, her memories, and even her power. Did they have to steal her mother from her, too?

Charlotte had endured it as long as she could, long enough to agree that joining the Wards program was the best choice. Then she had very honestly said that she hadn’t slept well and was tired, and had closed the door behind her mom so she could have a pity party by herself.

It had helped, some, and she was dry-eyed and fully composed some time later when she answered a knock at her door.

“Hello, Charlotte,” said Miss Cochrane. “I’ve been asked to escort you to a meeting. You’re being invited as Bouquet, so a mask or costume would be appropriate.”

She was holding the clothes Charlotte had arrived in the night before, laundered and folded, with two different options of masks resting on top of the pile. Charlotte accepted the armful of items, setting them down on the desk.

“The meeting is now?”

“Started a while ago, actually. I don’t think you need to rush too much, though. It didn’t sound like you were needed urgently.”

Charlotte nodded. No reason to make them wait, though, especially with how busy everything was. If this was about joining the Wards, she should just get it over with. She quickly donned the apron and wrapped the yellow scarf around her face, skipping the masks.

She hesitated. Something was missing. She looked around the room, patted her costume, such as it was, and looked through the items of clothing that were left. It took her a moment to realize that she had been hoping for the comforting weight of the cheese knife in her pocket. Her disappointment when she remembered that it was gone and that the PRT was hardly going to let her carry a weapon inside the headquarters was a disturbingly intense emotion. Had she really gotten so accustomed to the thought of stabbing people? She’d nearly had a panic attack the first time she’d used it.

Something to think about later.

“I’m ready,” she said, and followed Miss Cochrane down the hall, up two flights of stairs, and toward a large conference room. Vista and Weld had disappeared inside just as the door came in sight, which reinforced her assumption that the director was just getting to the Wards related business of their meeting. A moment later, three PRT agents exited the room, heading off purposefully in different directions. Efficient, to simply call the necessary people when the relevant agenda items came up.

Stepping through the door, Charlotte was surprised at how full the room was. More than forty people sat at conference tables or in chairs around the perimeter. One PRT agent was speaking, something about refugee camps.

Many in the room wore PRT field uniforms, but just as many were in costume. With so many capes in one place, the scents mingled and overlapped in an unpleasant mix of intoxicating and noxious. Right in front of her were the capes from last night: Gigaton, Wieldmaiden, and Tangle. Beyond them sat Miss Militia, Battery, and—

Someone bumped her from behind as they opened the door, and Charlotte was immediately on guard against the whiff of ammonia. Sure enough, Blueberry was there trying to sidle through the gap that wasn’t quite large enough to let her through. Charlotte stepped aside, allowing the door to swing wider.

“Thanks,” whispered Blueberry. Rather than look for a seat, she found an open stretch along the left hand wall and leaned against it.

Charlotte turned the other direction, taking a chair on the opposite side of the room and finally turning her attention to the person at the front.

Who was Alexandria.

Oh.

The strongest woman in the world floated a foot off the ground in front of two boards displaying a map of the city and photos of the Slaughterhouse Nine, all heavily annotated.

This… may not actually be about Bouquet signing on with the Wards.


	41. Tumble 5.4

From what Charlotte could tell, the meeting had already covered a great deal of ground before she had arrived, and it was moving at a rapid enough clip that she had difficulty keeping up with the current discussion, to say nothing of remembering all of the points that seemed to be building up a cohesive strategy. She was trying desperately not to nod off in her seat, and the only reason she’d managed it was because someone had delivered two large boxes of mini-donuts. It was a sign of the city’s situation that the little individually wrapped packs were considered luxury items, a treat to keep up morale for the people planning to face off against the Slaughterhouse Nine.

The powdered sugar ones disappeared quickly, but that was fine. Charlotte rather preferred the moist brown ones with the… not coconut. “Delicious crunch” was what the package said, which was mostly a lie but still had better texture than she’d gotten in a lot of food lately.

Charlotte tried hard to open her packet slowly in a way that the crinkly plastic wouldn’t interrupt or distract, and that took a lot more of her focus than it should have. She finally tuned back in halfway through the summary.

“Gigaton was our answer for Mannequin,” Alexandria was saying, “but we have definitive confirmation that Mannequin is already dead. He will now be most useful as rapid response to threats against the shelters or camps, and as backup for the team targeting Burnscar. Captain Rodriguez, Gigaton is the first person you call once Rime engages.”

“Understood, Ma’am.”

“Which brings us to Cherish. Thinkers have been unsuccessful at narrowing down her location in the city. Either she is refraining from overt use of her Master ability, or she has left the area. Reports from local villains of a falling out with Jack appear credible and could support the either interpretation. Work under the assumption that she is a present threat. PRT squads will coordinate in pairs, maintaining at least 30 yards of distance between each other for mutual monitoring. If encountered, Weld and myself have both demonstrated resistance to emotion-based mastery in the past. If the Wards have recovered from their ordeal, he is the preferred combatant to send, assuming appropriate backup. If he is not available, that task falls to me.

“That leaves Crawler. Surveillance has confirmed two clones fighting against the original, a fight that has continued for nearly thirty hours by now, ranging in and out of the bay. Fortunately for the city, they’ve spent more time underwater than they have on shore, but that makes it more difficult for us. Unfortunately, one of the clones appears to have a power that grants adaptive offence rather than adaptive defense, and the feedback loop has resulted in Crawler obtaining substantially more immunities than he had two days ago. It may be necessary to kill the offensive clone before anything else, but since he already possesses at least some of the immunities Crawler had at the time of cloning, and since he remains in close quarters with the other two, that is no easy task. The best option we have for all three Crawlers is Miss Militia, if she takes advantage of Bouquet’s boost again.”

Here Alexandria nodded at Charlotte, making an intimidating facsimile of eye contact through her blank black visor. This was the fourth time her name had come up in the meeting, and the attention that drew to her was no less disconcerting than it had been the first time.

“However, the priority target for that power combination remains the Siberian, as we discussed at the outset. There are possibilities there, pending further exploration of the power interaction, but for now the Crawlers will be observed and not engaged. In an emergency, I am the designated responder.”

Alexandria called for questions, in a way that really didn’t encourage anyone to speak up.

“Very good. One final reminder that while destroying the Nine is a very real option, your priority target is Jack Slash. Don’t let a small victory distract you from that primary goal. Dismissed. Go brief your teams.”

The room emptied quickly, leaving Charlotte, Blueberry, and a few other stragglers.

With fewer capes close by, the scents weren’t as overwhelming. Aside from her own clone, the only ones she smelled strongly were Tangle’s formaldehyde and Miss Militia’s pumpkin pie, though that latter was a bit different than before. It was hard to describe except as texture, though when she focused it seemed like maybe it was more diffuse, washing over Charlotte in subtly pulsing waves rather than collecting tightly around Miss Militia the way it had previously.

A cleared throat pulled Charlotte’s attention away, and she turned to see a tall figure looming over her. She let out an involuntary “Eep” and flinched away from the man, her heart racing.

“Sorry,” he said, taking a step back. She belatedly recognized him as Agent Laramie. “Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

Charlotte forced her breathing to slow. He was safe. The PRT building was safe. “It’s fine,” she said. “Is there something I’m supposed to be doing?”

“Not as such, no. I’ve asked to be assigned to your protective detail for the time being, so you can expect me around for any excursions or operations you take part in. In addition, I’ve been asked to coordinate with Miss Cochrane in helping you settle in here at the HQ.”

“Oh. Thank you.” Despite the whole strategy meeting she’d just attended, it was his mention of needing protection that brought home the idea that she would be going out again. That she might need to actively seek out another confrontation with the Nine—and the Siberian in particular, according to Alexandria’s planning.

Agent Laramie seemed to understand, or maybe it was just obvious that her current plan would start with Step One: stay far away from mass murderers.

“We’ll do our best to keep you safe,” he said. “I know we didn’t entirely succeed last time, but this time we will know what we’re walking into. Part of being ready, though, means learning more about how your power interacts with Miss Militia, finding out what’s changed. If you’re still willing, they want us to head down to the firing range now to test some things.”

Charlotte nodded. She didn’t think anything her power did would have changed—it was consistent every time she’d boosted Skitter, so it wasn’t likely to change what it did for someone else. Still, far better to experiment now than when the Siberian was chasing after them.

But…now that she thought about it, there was no reason she had to personally go on the mission, right? She apparently had four duplicates right here that even her mom said were just as good as the original. Why not send them?

“I do still want to help,” she said, testing out the idea as it formed. “Alexandria is here with the capes she picked to handle the Nine, but even she said in the meeting that the heroes don’t have the power to really deal with the Siberian or Crawler. That’s something I might be able to change. But the PRT seems to trust my clones just as much as me.” She gestured across the room at Blueberry, who had sat through the same strategy meeting and was now having a conversation with Tangle. “Have you asked one of them?”

Agent Laramie pursed his lips and gave a slight nod, seeming to consider the question. Then he folded his arms, cocking a thumb to covertly point behind himself. When Charlotte looked that direction, she saw Miss Militia standing by the map board. Instead of studying it, though, she was leaning against the board, focusing an intense glare at Blueberry. One gun in a shoulder holster flickered green, vanishing and reappearing. A moment later, the knife at her hip did the same.

“Miss Militia has _declined_ to work with any of Echidna’s clones, no matter who they came from,” Laramie explained in a soft voice. “I… recommend not talking about them with her, if you can avoid it. Something bad happened last night. I’ll tell you what I know about it when we have a bit more space, but, well… even though some of the clones have your same power, they will need to help in other ways. For this we need _you_.”

Charlotte took that in, watching as Blueberry waddled out the door following Tangle somewhere. Miss Militia’s stance softened slightly, and she looked around the room, giving an acknowledging nod when her eyes briefly met Charlotte’s.

“Okay,” she said. “Where do I need to go?”

\---0---

The testing session was long and stressful. Miss Militia was hyperfocused and tense through the whole thing, snapping orders to the people around her—mostly the PRT agents, since Charlotte hadn’t needed to do much except move her hand to make or break contact. Charlotte wasn’t going to judge, though. She knew she’d lashed out and been poor company after Leviathan, and according to Agent Laramie second triggers were usually worse.

They’d worked out the important things, though, and now it was just a matter of cycling through potential weapons and deciding which ones to try. The decision was made to break for a late lunch, and Charlotte left the firing range to find Miss Cochrane waiting in the hall.

“Are you finished?” she asked.

“For now. I’m supposed to come back at 3:00,” Charlotte answered.

“Good. Your grandfather is here and would like to see you.”

That was good news, but… “Zaydee is here? Why? Did my mom tell him to come?”

“No. He should probably tell you himself. But if you’re ready then follow me. He’s been waiting for a while.”

“What? Since when?”

“Not too long. Less than an hour. Your preparation with Miss Militia was designated a priority activity, and I didn’t want to interrupt with something non-urgent.”

That made sense. This was their best bet at killing the Siberian, which made it more important than family visits.

Miss Cochrane led the way up far too many flights of stairs, eventually reaching a tiny office-turned-bedroom like the one Charlotte had slept in the night before. Benjamin Raimi was inside, a scowl on his face. That scowl shifted into a mocking grin when Charlotte entered, and he levered himself up out of the chair.

“Who is this masked hero? I wanted to see my granddaughter!”

Charlotte yanked down the scarf and grinned back at him. “Hi, Zaydee.”

He pulled her into a hug, shaking his head back and forth to tickle her forehead with his mustache.

“Grandpa!” she complained.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” said Miss Cochrane from the side. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes with some food for both of you.”

Benjamin dropped back into the chair, and Charlotte took a seat on the low filing cabinet beside the desk.

“So, a hero, huh?”

“Yeah. Probably the Wards. Have you talked to Mom yet?”

His scowl returned. “No. Laura’s busy cossetting your doppelganger.”

“Oh. So you know about them already?”

He scoffed. “Hard not to when she came banging on my door at absurdly-early-o’clock yesterday morning. Spent all day trying to convince her to come to the PRT, except when she was sleeping because apparently cape fights can wear you out. Who knew?”

“Did she… look like me?”

“Hardly. Even if she had I’d have known right away that she was a defective knock-off. Tried to be nice, give some advice, but she definitely wasn’t you. Someone should tell this Porcupine cape that their clones just don’t cut the mustard.”

“It’s Echidna. And I hope I never have to be close enough to her again that I’d be able to pass on the message. But thank you for thinking I’m not replaceable. Mom seems to want to adopt all of them.”

“All of…. You mean there are more?”

Charlotte nodded. “Five now. Probably more than that, with my luck. Two of them even look identical to me.”

Her grandfather considered that for a moment. “I’m going to have to have a talk with Laura. You aren’t replaceable, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Charlotte sniffed. “Thanks, Zaydee.”

“Now, tell me how they’re treating you. How long have you been here?”

Before she knew it, Charlotte had told him about waking up from nightmares, wondering if they meant anything, and he had launched into an off-key rendition of “Go Go Go Joseph” from _Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat_. Conversations with her zaydee always found their way to musicals sooner or later. No matter the situation, he could find a line or song or plot (such as they were) that fit it “perfectly.” Joseph interpreting the butler’s dream was less of a stretch than usual.

Friendships, tragedy, school, it didn’t matter. Everything could be related to some Broadway show or another. She smiled to herself, thinking of the way he’d used “Time Study Man” from _The Pajama Game_ to get her to stop stressing about classwork as much. Or how he’d pointed to the gangs in _West Side Story_ to make her laugh about the Empire sympathizers posturing with taunts and jeers. Even bigger than that, he’d always maintained that Behemoth was called “the hero killer” because its attack on New York in ’94 had come just after _Heroic!_ debuted on Broadway, ending its chances to win a Tony. Charlotte’s smile vanished. That joke had always been darkly funny in the past, in her memories. Having experienced an actual Endbringer attack, it now felt horribly inappropriate. Wasn’t that backwards? Weren’t people supposed to develop black humor as a way of dealing with death and fear? Charlotte just felt sick to think of making light of an attack that way. Of New York’s devastation, and the thing that caused it.

Benjamin noticed the change in mood and stopped singing. “Hey. Char. It’ll be okay.” He pushed to his feet again, then leaned down to give her a hug.

Face pressed into his belly, Charlotte sighed. “Can we talk about something else? I haven’t seen you in a week. How have you been? Have things been alright at your apartment?”

“I’ve been fine, except for wondering where you went. You don’t need to tell me about it right now, I got some of the story from that clone who showed up. As for the apartment, well. It’s seen better days.”

“More flooding?” she asked.

He stepped back, shook his head. “Can’t you smell it on me? I positively reek!”

Charlotte hung her head. “No. Can’t smell anything, still. I thought it was just a cold or something after all that water up my nose, but apparently it’s a powers thing. I’m not sure it’ll ever come back.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her. “You can’t smell anything at all?”

“Not normal things.”

“Well, that’s convenient. Probably expands your acceptable dating pool by a factor of six.”

“Zaydee!”

“It’s true! How many high school boys shower often enough?”

“Most of the city doesn’t even have running water, so probably none of them right now, same as the rest of us.”

“Nope. The answer is ‘it doesn’t matter anymore!’ you lucky girl.”

“Ew. Stop!”

“But no, it wasn’t flooding. Maybe you can’t tell, but I reek of smoke because the apartment burned to the ground last night. That was what finally convinced the fake you to come in to the PRT.”

Charlotte’s jaw dropped open. Her heart was racing, her eyes blinking like reality was something stuck under her eyelids and they were trying to dislodge it.

“Don’t worry, Char. It’s alright. Everything important was in the safe deposit box, so aside from my vinyl collection there wasn’t much left to lose. Plus, it was a studio. This office is almost as big; I’ll be fine.”

“That’s not it, Zaydee. My dream… I dreamed about this.” She pulled herself together, stood. “I need to go find Miss Cochrane.”

“That’s the lady who brought you up here, right? She said she’ll be back in a few minutes, so just wait here. That apartment is just like Brigadoon—no way to go back there. So there’s no rush.”

“No, this is important. I know who burned down your house.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of the musicals referenced in this chapter came out prior to Scion diverging the timeline, except for Heroic!, a highly romanticized celebration of Vikare’s life on both sides of the mask. The acting was decent, but the music was terrible and it would not have won a Tony.


	42. Tumble 5.5

It was frustratingly difficult to find someone willing to listen. To everyone else in the building, news of a clone working with an Empire faction was about important enough for a footnote to the day’s briefing—a footnote on page five, since the Echidna situation had been designated secondary in priority behind the planned strike to eliminate Jack Slash.

Charlotte couldn’t even argue with them. The possible end of the world was demonstrably more critical than her own personal crisis. That didn’t make her pain any less real, though, it just forced her to face it practically alone. She remembered the anger, the hatred she’d felt in that dream. This other version of her had been so desperate to lash out that she’d been willing to associate with Rune and Othala in order to attack her grandfather. Thinking back on it, she could identify the overflowing disgust the other Charlotte felt for the Nazi capes, an emotion only exceeded by the disgust aimed at herself—at the real Charlotte.

That clone, a fellow Jew who had all or most of Charlotte’s memories, was allying herself with people who had not only murdered her friends and neighbors, had not only made Brockton Bay the bigotry capital of New England, but who went so far as to idolize the Western world’s most famous attempt at genocide. And the only reason she was doing that was because she felt that wiping out all traces of Charlotte’s actual life was worth the debasement.

Charlotte had seen plenty of people point to an individual or group, heard them say that their target was “even worse” than the Empire. Always that had been a signal to her that those people either had no idea what the Empire stood for or, worse, agreed with it. In this case, though? She’d felt that utter loathing coming from someone who was very nearly herself, and the comparison was made with a full appreciation of the damage that ideology and its adherents did. _That_ was the worst part of finding out that the dreams were real.

Those other Charlottes _weren’t_ her, but were nearly so. The actions felt ephemeral. More than realizing that an almost-her had burned down zaydee’s apartment or that another had tried to stab Laura, it was that unremitting blackness she’d felt inside her duplicate that made her ache inside. Heartsick was an understatement.

And it wasn’t important enough for anyone to listen.

Eventually Miss Cochrane introduced her to a pair of analysts who seemed intrigued not by the information but by the way she’d obtained it. They’d started asking questions about her nightmares, then relocated to a conference room to accommodate a larger group. Which led to Charlotte sitting on the opposite end of a too-small table from Mirror and a twisted, ugly version of herself that she didn’t have a nickname for yet.

Thankfully, she was separated from them on one side by the two analysts, and on the other by the formaldehyde stench of Tangle.

“So,” said the analyst who’d asked them to call her Laurie. “we have three overlapping sets of potentially shared dreams. Sequence of shared scenes doesn’t match, number of total scenes varies, and only a minority are verifiable as real events.”

At her side Shannon tapped her note pad, circling something, but didn’t speak. Laurie glanced over and nodded.

“Can we do anything about it?” Charlotte asked.

“Do? What do you mean?”

“Can we stop the dreams from happening? The possible shared memories thing.”

Laurie and Shannon shared a look.

“Possibly,” said Laurie. “There are at least four classifications of parahuman-related dream phenomena, and we’ll need to know more before we can determine whether yours falls into one of the categories that are amenable to manipulation or outside influence.”

Ugly Charlotte leaned forward. “You mean things like this are common?”

“I wouldn’t say common, but with nearly three decades of research into parahumans there are a lot of interesting cases that have been documented. Dreams feature in a surprisingly large subset of those.”

“In other words, yes,” said Shannon. Her voice was raspy, like her throat was perpetually dry. “It’s far from unheard of. It’s not well understood, though. There’s a lot we don’t know. None of the cases I know of are immediately similar to yours.”

“So what’s next?” asked Mirror.

“We need a lot more data points,” said Shannon. “That means more perspectives, if they exist. We’ll interview the other copies of you. We’ll, talk to the PRT agents who experienced the cloning process. None of them have reported anything yet. It’s likely that this is limited to just parahumans, or just you.”

“More relevant to you, though,” added Laurie, “more data points means more time. You should each start recording your dreams, writing them up in as much detail as you remember each morning. I’ll create a file to collect what you submit, and we’ll set up a meeting in a week or so to discuss what we learn.”

Charlotte sagged. Another week—at minimum—of nightmares spawned by her own alternate selves. Possibly something to look forward to for the rest of her life.

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in!” Shannon called.

Even before the door opened, Charlotte knew from the smell of pumpkin pie who would be on the other side.

“Thank you very much for coming, Miss Militia,” said Laurie. “I promise this will only take a few moments of your time.”

Miss Militia stopped in the doorway, surveying the room with narrowed eyes. Keeping one eye on the people inside, she glanced back into the hallway where Miss Cochrane was waiting with the staff member who had escorted Charlotte’s clones. Something nonverbal passed between them, and Miss Militia stepped the rest of the way into the room. She ignored the chair next to Tangle and instead moved to stand at Charlotte’s side.

“What is this?” she asked. She seemed to be addressing the analysts, but her gaze never left Charlotte’s clones. Charlotte saw both of them wilt under her attention.

“These girls had some strange dreams last night. You’re documented as having experienced dream-related phenomena in the past, and you came in contact with Echidna about the same time Bouquet did. We wanted to compare notes.”

Miss Militia looked down at Charlotte, though she still kept the clones in the corner of her vision. “You remember?” she asked with a strange intensity.

“Um, some things? My dreams seemed to show memories of my clones.”

“Oh.” Her tone was disappointed, then shifted to disgust. “Oh.”

“Did you dream last night?” asked Shannon.

Miss Militia ignored her, instead turning to Tangle. “You’re a part of this?”

“Just observing,” said Tangle equably.

Miss Militia nodded. Addressing Laurie and Shannon, she said, “I don’t have to sleep, and I usually choose not to because my dreams always replay bad memories. Including my initial trigger. I have no intention of reliving any part of this week in the foreseeable future. If there’s a chance my dreams will be invaded by that _thing_ ….” Miss Militia’s fists clenched and Charlotte saw traces of green mist twisting in the corners of the room.

There was a beat of silence before she continued, “Well. Thank you for the warning. I plan to never sleep again.” She turned and strode from the room. The door didn’t quite slam behind her.

“Well,” said Laurie, “so much for that data point.”

Shannon shook her head. “I told you to wait.”

Charlotte ignored them, thinking about the anger and suspicion in Miss Militia’s eyes.

Laurie noisily blew some hair out of her eyes. “Fine, you were right. Lend me your notes? I’ll write this up and file a copy with the Think Tank. Do you have any comments you‘d like to append, Tangle?”

“No,” he answered. “I think it’s better if I submit my own separate report. For the moment, I have other tasks to do.”

Chairs scraped on the floor. The door clicked twice. When Charlotte looked up, she was… well, “alone with herself” had an ironic ring to it.

“Hi,” said Ugly Charlotte.

“I thought you’d have run off to avoid us again,” said Mirror.

“I… yeah. This is… this is hard.” Charlotte really wished she’d come up with a plan before deciding on this conversation. Knowing what she wanted to say and a step-by-step plan of how to say it would be ideal, but even just ‘step zero: know for sure that you want to say something’ would be a huge help.

The other two let her gather herself in silence, which Charlotte appreciated. Then she felt weird about that appreciation.

“I don’t even know why I’m still here,” she said. She traced a line of gouges in the table with her finger. One of them still had a tiny sliver of glass glinting inside it. “I don’t think you’re me, and I don’t _want_ to think you’re me. But… I can tell that you aren’t all the same. Seeing it from the inside, in the dreams, that was a slap in the face. Just because two of… us tried to kill mom and zaydee, doesn’t make the rest of you, us, whatever… you aren’t all evil.”

Charlotte looked up, meeting the Mirror’s eyes. “You helped me get here safely last night. And Mom says you saved her life,” she said to the other copy. “I’ll try to at least treat you as individuals, even if I’m still pretty mad that you exist. Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s fine,” said Mirror.

“Yeah, we all think you’re pretty great,” added the other. “I’m impressed you’re working through it this fast. I mean, it’s been less than a day, right? That’s a really short time to come to terms with a slew of new ‘sisters,’ even if a third of them weren’t antagonistic.”

“Honestly,” said Mirror, “it’s fairly weird for us, too.”

Charlotte buried her face in her hands. “This whole week sucks! I didn’t want to be cloned.”

“Yeah, but it happened because you saved Miss Militia. I hope that makes it worth it.”

“And,” added the ugly clone, “I’m glad I exist. So, thanks for that. I know you didn’t want this, but it could have gone a lot worse.”

“Forgive me for not being thrilled about that,” said Charlotte. “But I don’t want to look at you with the same hate Miss Militia did. So I’m trying.”

“That’s enough for now. Let’s just focus on surviving the Nine. We can work on ‘self help’ and ‘self esteem’ later.”

Charlotte groaned. “Please, no clone jokes. I’m still struggling to know what to call you. Right now you’ve just got some not-so-complimentary nicknames in my head.”

Mirror perked up at that. “We were actually all talking about that over lunch. We figured that as the original you deserved first dibs on the name Charlotte, but we don’t really want to give up on that identity either. So, we came up with some variants that we can use for each other, at least for the time being.”

“Okay?”

“You can call me Chardonnay. The heavier one who talked Noelle into releasing you is going by Charlemagne.”

“I’m seeing the pattern.”

“Yeah. You haven’t met her yet, but the one who came in with zaydee is Chartreuse. We’ve been calling the angry one down in the cells Charlatan—she’s the one who tried to stab mom. She’s still not safe for any of us to be around, though.”

“What did you pick,” Charlotte asked the ugly version of herself.

“Shar Pei.”

“Wait, like the wrinkly dogs?”

Shar Pei nodded excitedly. “Exactly! I love the new shape my face got, so I thought I’d reference it with the cute puppies everyone loves.”

Charlotte shared a glance with Chardonnay. A version of her actually liked those jowly mops? That was pretty definitive evidence that the clones diverged from each other and from her. Not that it had really been in question before, but still.

“This is going to take me a while. To get used to, and to remember,” said Charlotte.

“We won’t force ourselves on you when we don’t have to. Come find us when you’re ready to talk, or you can send a message with Mom. She’s been spending a lot of time with us.” ~~Mirror~~ Chardonnay’s voice trailed off at the end. “Sorry. Shouldn’t have said that.”

“I’ll come find you,” said Charlotte. She left as gracefully as she could manage, which wasn’t very. Still, it had been a start and things were less tense than they had been.

She asked Miss Cochrane to escort her back to her bedroom office. What she really wanted right now was time to herself—without any other ‘selves’ intruding on that.


	43. Chapter 43

Charlotte had all of eight minutes to herself before Agent Laramie appeared in her office-bedroom’s doorway.

“We have a sighting of the Siberian. Time to go.”

And just like that she was off again in “costume,” yellow scarf covering half her face while she climbed in the back of an armored vehicle with Agent Laramie. Battery and Miss Militia were already inside, along with several members of the squad that had been in the firing range for the power test. Charlotte saw other PRT agents boarding a second and third vehicle.

“Listen up, people,” shouted an agent with lieutenant stripes on his uniform as the engine roared to life and they pulled away from the PRT building. He was standing in the back of the truck with his helmet off. “This is usually the part where I’d do the good news, bad news game, but we’re going up against the Siberian, and none of my news is worse than that. On the flip side, we’ve got things that might actually work against her, which is the best news we’ve had on that front since she turned the Protectorate into the Triumvirate. You know what you’re doing. Do it right. Keep each other alive.”

The men and women around Charlotte all nodded and muttered agreement.

“There are some additional details you need to know. Item one: intel. Siberian’s location was called in by Echidna or one of her minions. The Thinkers have verified it and told me not to expect a trap, but keep your eyes open. Echidna herself isn’t anywhere nearby, but she apparently has eyes and ears across the city, so you’d better believe she’s got hands too. Stay sharp.

“Item two: backup, ours and theirs. Burnscar was spotted in the docks. Rime left two minutes ago to pin her down and hopefully take her out. Crawler is still on the northern shore, not likely to intervene in our AO. Jack Slash, Bonesaw, and Cherish are still unaccounted for. Alexandria and Gigaton are on standby, ready to pounce on Jack if either of these attacks draw him out. If Jack keeps his head down then we get Alexandria’s help, but that won’t happen until after well after we’ve engaged.

“Which brings us to item three: Rules of Engagement. This is the Siberian. We’re going all out. The only way to save any hostages is to make sure the Siberian is dead. Battery is our mover, and she will be doing her best to get civilians clear so we have fewer lost causes to mourn.

“And finally, item four: reminders for your thick skulls. Bouquet and Militia are the reason we have a chance today. We protect them at all costs.” The lieutenant put his helmet on. He didn’t invite questions, and nobody asked any.

After an awkward moment, he spoke again, his voice muffled by the helmet and face shield. “Vehicles two and three report they are go. Ready for you, ma’am.”

Miss Militia tapped her comm. “Weapons out!”

In near-unison each agent drew a gun of some type and held it in front of them, pointed at the floor or ceiling. In a flash of green fog, every single weapon dissolved. The clouds of green streamed into Miss Militia, disappearing. Then Miss Militia reached out and set her hand on Charlotte’s shoulder. The roiling steam of pumpkin pie smell swelled around them, and one after another little swirls of green shot back out to the agents in the vehicle. As each packet arrived it condensed into a new shape, and in mere moments every agent was armed with a unique tinker weapon. Charlotte recognized the stasis gun from before in the hands of the woman seated across from her.

The packets of green energy continued to shoot out, passing through the walls of the vehicle and out the rear opening to arm the men and women in the other transports.

As far as they had been able to determine, the tinker items Miss Militia could generate drew on a distinct well of energy or material; while her second trigger gave her the ability to create as many traditional weapons as she wanted anywhere in her range, tinker tech could only be summoned if she absorbed it first. With Charlotte assisting, that limit was partially bypassed, in that Miss Militia could dissolve mundane weapons and reform them as tinker ones she had seen before. There were still limitations. Charlotte’s boost only allowed Miss Militia to make a single copy of each tinker item, and the boost-generated tinker tech was apparently even more fragile and unreliable than the usual sort, frequently misfiring or breaking down mid-use. The fact that she could summon and re-summon each piece at will more than made up for that weakness.

More importantly for the coming fight, the weapons created by Miss Militia’s altered power seemed to be permanent physical objects rather than something constantly sustained by her power. In the case of tinker weapons derived from Charlotte’s boost, that translated into semi-permanence of nearly a minute even after she broke contact. That meant that if Charlotte had to let go of Miss Militia to reposition or dodge an attack, the PRT agents wouldn’t immediately die when their weapons reverted to mundane forms.

They had manpower and firepower on their side. They could win this. Even if Charlotte’s heart was racing, her mind replaying the moment when the Siberian had seized her by the neck, she could do this.

She had to do this.

There was a lurch, and suddenly everyone around her was streaming out the back following the Lieutenant onto the street. Charlotte clung to Miss Militia’s jacket, with Agent Laramie following behind. There were screams that sounded very close.

“One street west! Go, go!” shouted the lieutenant.

The agents from the other vehicles ran by in groups of four or five. The ones from Charlotte’s truck formed up in a loose escort around her and Miss Militia, jogging in formation past the gaping glassless windows of an office complex. There weren’t many civilians on the street, but all of them were fleeing the opposite direction. Charlotte could hear the blaring of a fire alarm that got louder the closer she moved to the end of the street.

Battery shot past them all in a barely-visible blur. She paused just shy of the intersection for several seconds, then disappeared around the corner before any of the agents had reached it. She reappeared a few heartbeats later holding a young boy who looked about nine, tears streaming down his face.

She said something to him and gave a little push, and he started running. That process repeated itself with three more people (one child and two adults) while the PRT fire teams made their way around the corner. The Siberian stood just inside the entrance to the open lobby of a multistory building advertising itself as the Morgan and Stevens Law Firm. She loomed over a group of about a dozen people cowering back against the walls. Among them was a college age redhead who looked familiar for some reason.

Strangely, it was the building next door, not the one the Siberian was in, where the fire alarm was sounding. Looking that way, Charlotte saw two large holes torn in the wall. A body lay half out of one of those holes. A similar hole farther down the road suggested that the Siberian had been active here for a while. That made sense, if the PRT had had time to mobilize in response to a sighting. Why were there still people here, though? Had they tried to hide instead of running?

As Charlotte’s group finally arrived and took up position a short distance behind the other teams that had deployed in a wide semicircle, the Siberian glanced negligently over her shoulder at the team of PRT agents closest to the entrance, then pointedly ignored them. Facing the trapped civilians, she theatrically covered her eyes with one hand while the other started counting down from five.

As soon as she covered her eyes, half of the hostages scrambled to their feet and started to run. They angled along the wall, obviously hoping to get past her to the street. The Siberian only gave them a count of three, lowering her hand and leering around while she still had two fingers extended. In an impossibly fast motion she sprinted past one man and caught the two people beyond him with a hand around each neck. One of them was the redhead. The other, an adult man who by his hair might have been the girl’s father, was tossed to the ground and pinned there by one of the Siberian’s feet. With her other hand, the Siberian pulled the girl’s wrist to her mouth and, keeping eye contact with the man, started to bite down.

With a flash of light the agent with the stasis gun fired, and a familiar opaque eggshell wrapped itself around the Siberian and her two victims. During the seconds that they remained frozen, Battery raced in and extracted one of the other hostages.

As the stasis field tore, the Siberian lifted her gaze to where Miss Militia and Charlotte were standing. The playful sadism of her expression morphed into an angry snarl. In the next moment that snarl disappeared behind another eggshell field, and Battery’s arrival spurred the remaining civilians to make a break for it. Unfortunately, they fled toward the PRT agents and blocked most of the firing lanes.

The stasis field tore again, but didn’t reappear. An impotent clicking as the agent desperately pumped the trigger on the gun showed that the weapon had failed. A green cloud shot from Miss Militia to refresh the gun, but that was long enough for the Siberian to move. She stepped forward heavily enough to snap the man’s leg, then tossed the girl forward into the path of the stasis beam just as the agent fired again. When it formed, the usual eggshell orb was suspended in the air in the perfect position to block any further shots from that angle.

Then the Siberian was darting toward the closest of the fire teams. All the agents that had a clear sightline fired their weapons. Many were off target due to her speed, and the inside of the lobby erupted with a variety of esoteric effects. Those few shots that landed had no effect.

The Siberian was mere feet from the agents when the stasis field manifested around her again. Charlotte let out a breath, trying to calm her tension. The PRT knew their jobs and were good at them. All she had to do was help provide the tools they needed. They could handle this.

The agents that had nearly found themselves in arms reach of the Siberian quickly retreated from the bubble. Miss Militia used her power to absorb and manifest the stasis gun again; the agent using the weapon had dialed in the timing now, and the new field formed a mere half second after the previous one dissipated. That gave enough time for Battery to retrieve the wounded civilian and for the others to finish getting clear. Probably not clear of danger, but at least not in the middle of the fight.

“Steady,” called the lieutenant. “Plan Alpha is go. Wave one aim, fire.”

The final command came just as the stasis field tore around the Siberian’s form, and four different tinker weapons fired simultaneously. A burst of unidentifiable smells accompanied the burst of multi-colored light that fizzled against the Siberian’s skin, then a second later the eggshell orb sprang up again.

“Wave two. Aim, fire.”

Once again four weapons fired, this time with a slow-moving shadowy beam and something that made a ripping sound as it raced through the air. At the same time, streaks of green fog sprang out from Miss Militia to absorb the ineffective wave one weapons and replace them with tech of another design.

“Wave three. Aim, fire.”

A jagged blue rip in space connected with the Siberian’s chest, and a massive explosion of noise tossed her black and white body backward into the ruined lobby.

The elation Charlotte felt at seeing something affect the Siberian competed with panic when the follow-up stasis shot missed entirely, wrapping itself around the reception desk instead. There was indistinct movement in the lobby, then nothing. The stasis field around the desk, like the one still suspended in the air over the road, was much more persistent without the Siberian’s invulnerability wearing it down, and it provided both cover and concealment for the Siberian.

Still nothing.

Just when the lieutenant began to order a closer investigation, the Siberian appeared—not from the lobby, but tearing through the third story wall. With only the clatter of falling debris as warning, she sprang down at the agents below. She was aimed directly at the agent with the gun that had just blasted her off her feet. He reacted by firing into the air. The same blue distortion from before leapt up to meet the Siberian, but she somehow twisted around it in the air. It looked like she would spear through the man’s head with an arm. At the last moment she instead swung her hand to the side and struck the beam-like distortion still emanating from his gun.

The resulting shockwave knocked that fire team into the ground, along with the two nearest teams as well. Those at the periphery of the blast got up slowly; those at center of the blast didn’t. Unconscious or dead, they were out of the fight. Miss Militia’s green mist reclaimed their tinker weapons, and the effective one materialized in the lieutenant’s hands.

That last move was much more intelligent and devastating than Charlotte had expected from someone whose power made her into an unstoppable cannibal. Instead of merely killing the gun’s wielder and getting trapped in stasis again, she’d done something tactical that took out a lot more people at once. Perhaps just as importantly, the Siberian had been flung away by the explosion, away from the kill zone in the center of the PRT formation.

Charlotte looked around. Not seeing the Siberian anywhere, Charlotte focused on the nearby scents, seeking for the chicken coop stench that signified her presence.

She found it, dead ahead and a bit off the ground.

“She’s behind the stasis bubble,” she whispered to Miss Militia.

The older heroine nodded and manifested the stasis gun in her own grip, then let go of Charlotte and strafed to the side already firing rapidly. The Siberian was too fast, scuttling along the surface of the suspended orb like a spider, her claws digging into the surface and tearing at it. This seemed to be enough to accelerate its dissolution, and as it tore apart the redhead from before slipped free, still flying through the air, still shrieking. The Siberian latched onto an ankle as she passed and was pulled along as if weightless, the sudden change in momentum getting her out of Miss Militia’s line of fire for several crucial seconds. When Miss Militia adjusted her aim, the trigger clicked uselessly.

Charlotte ran to try to make contact again so that Miss Militia could re-summon the gun. Agent Laramie was right behind her. The lieutenant brought his weapon to bear, but the Siberian was holding the redhead between them and he hesitated. That moment was all she needed.

The Siberian turned and met the eyes of the man whose leg she had broken, who had been receiving first aid from a brave bystander. She stabbed a single finger through the girl’s spine somewhere in her lower back, then let go. The girl gasped at the pain and crumpled to the ground, legs useless.

“Anne!” yelled her father.

The lieutenant fired in the next moment, exploding a chunk of wall in the opposite building as the Siberian ducked out of the way and sprinted straight for Miss Militia.

Charlotte got there first, and with a surge of pumpkin pie the stasis gun formed and fired. The Siberian was trapped again.

Agent Laramie pulled Charlotte away from where the Siberian would emerge, Miss Militia keeping pace with a hand clasped on Charlotte’s shoulder. For the next thrty to forty seconds she kept up a constant repetitive fire with the stasis gun, refreshing it with her power between every shot. While the two of them created some distance from the killer, the PRT agents repositioned themselves and Battery evacuated the fallen agents and remaining civilians, including Anne and her father.

Finally, the squad was ready again. Charlotte knew it had only been a brief time—remarkably fast in fact—but watching the strobe-like motion of the Siberian trying to track and chase her stretched the time out unbearably.

“Wave four,” the lieutenant ordered. “Aim, fire!”

The pattern resumed. Everything fizzled until wave eight, when a spray of pink motes of light rapidly coalesced around the Siberian. They suddenly solidified into an irregular translucent crystal that immediately flashed with an intense yellow light. Charlotte was left blinking spots out of her eyes, but she wasn’t so blind that she missed the lack of a stasis orb forming when Miss Militia fired her gun.

When Charlotte could see again, her eyes confirmed what her sense of smell had already told her—the Siberian was gone.

“Did, did it work?” asked an agent hopefully. She was holding the weapon responsible for the bizarre effect. It looked less like a gun and more like a game controller attached to a garden hose.

“Can’t say for sure,” said the lieutenant. “It could have just teleported her away. Militia, where did you see that weapon before?”

“It was one of Scour’s, a hero from Oklahoma. Brief career, died to Behemoth in the Lyon attack. The second one. She tended toward destructive devices, and I don’t remember her having any teleporter tech.”

“Still, stay sharp. Andrews, call it in and get some Thinker support.”

Charlotte found herself in the center of a tense group trying to keep vigilant against something that might or might not be coming back. She tried to calm her racing heart, tried to be optimistic, but something was bugging her about the situation. Something beyond the violence and fear.

She tried to think about what she knew of the Siberian. Aside from the basics that made her infamous, the only details she could recall were a couple of phrases from that packet of dossiers handed out at the lake meeting. “Powers and physical laws have inconsistent effects.” “Has never been known to speak; possibly mute.” Neither of those seemed useful.

“Thinker response is inconclusive, lieutenant,” called an agent, presumably Andrews.

Charlotte heard the lieutenant mutter a frustrated “Of course it is” under his breath before acknowledging the report more formally.

It was several minutes later when her tense attention latched on to a phantom smell of chicken shit. It was rocketing towards them from…

“Behind!” she screamed, pointing back in the direction of the vehicles.

Agents spun to look, raised weapons. The warning came too late for one agent who was crushed by the massive streetlight that the Siberian had uprooted and swung down in an overhead strike. She twitched it to the side and knocked two more off their feet, though they at least were still moving where they fell.

Miss Militia fired the stasis gun, but the streetlight was interposed and got locked in place instead. The Siberian dodged behind the orb, using it as cover to avoid shots from the two weapons that had been shown to at least do _something_. A moment later chunks of asphalt and concrete were launched from behind her cover. Rather than try to enter melee again, she was tearing up the road and using her strength to throw rocks at them from a distance. Her aim wasn’t perfect, but the projectiles were large and fast, and several agents were bowled over with obvious injuries.

An entire slab of sidewalk sailed over the top of the frozen streetlight, and Charlotte could tell it was coming straight for her. She tried to backpedal, but was too slow to get up to speed. She wouldn’t be able to get out of the way! Her rising panic was unfounded--Agent Laramie yanked Charlotte’s arm and pulled her out of the projectile’s path. That panic gave way to another fear as soon as the slab had crashed into the road behind her. In moving out of the way she’d broken contact with Miss Militia. They couldn’t afford to lose her augmented power! It was only two steps, but Charlotte did her best to sprint that short distance and push at the pumpkin pie smell as firmly as she could.

Most of the agents were now facing the Siberian’s makeshift shield, using their tinker weapons to blast debris out of the air when she threw it, or else shooting the stasis bubble to hurry its degradation and remove her cover. There was a brief lull from the other side, then a rust-green sedan came spinning around one edge of the orb. It slid straight at a group of agents who’d been trying to flank along the wall of a building.

A figure dove from a window above, impaling the car with a glowing sword that extended all the way into the road beneath. The hard light sword jolted the car to a stop several feet shy of the PRT agents, and the cape wielding it grunted as the force of the impact jolted her arms and swung her toward the ground at high speed. The sword vanished as her form compressed into a sphere of light that bounced off the asphalt and out into the street. When it slowed, the woman who emerged was wearing a professional suit rather than a costume.

“Thank you, Brandish,” said the lieutenant, even has he fired the blue distortion weapon at the Siberian’s head peeking around the side of the orb. She pulled back too quickly and a chunk of building exploded. “Is the rest of New Wave here? We could use some flyers.”

“Not Brandish,” Charlotte corrected him. The ammonia mixed in with the look-alike’s lemon scent was a dead giveaway. “She’s a clone.

Agents pulled away. Miss Militia’s weapon twitched towards the fake Brandish, but she managed to keep it trained at the Siberian’s cover. Laramie, in contrast, didn’t hesitate to swing his gun around and target her.

The clone didn’t seem fazed. She gave Charlotte a tight smile. “Just so. If you had allowed me a moment to speak, I’d have said so myself. New Wave doesn’t hide things like that. I’m here at Echidna’s behest, and I’m the one who called in the sighting.”

“We’re glad for the help,” said the lieutenant, giving Laramie a pointed glance. Charlotte noted that he didn’t actually give any orders about standing down or accepting allies, and Agent Laramie didn’t shift his focus.

“Is there more of a plan than this?” asked not-Brandish.

“There is,” said the lieutenant. In a louder voice he called out, “Plan Bravo is go. Get to minimum safe!”

The teams closest to the Siberian pulled back at a near run. Agent Andrews set a large pack at Miss Militia’s feet, opening it to reveal flashbang grenades. Opening it wasn’t strictly necessary, since Miss Militia’s altered power gave her a sense of all the weapons nearby, but it gave the supporting agents a way to see how quickly their materiel was being used.

The top four grenades dissolved in a cloud of green. That cloud shot away and disappeared behind the stasis orb. The next second there was a tremendous blast accompanied by a warping in the air. A circle of road shimmered into glass while a flicker of green flames writhed above it. The stasis bubble failed, dropping the streetlight onto the glassed section of street, shattering it. The bits of post that came in contact with the green flames started to hiss and spit tiny molten globules.

The Siberian was unharmed. She dashed behind a parked pickup truck before she could be caught by another stasis field. Miss Militia converted four more grenades into Bakuda bombs and caused them to appear on the far side of the truck, practically at the Siberian’s feet. The explosion rendered the front half of the truck into a yellow spiky material that instantly caught fire, the back half into sand. One of the other effects was concussive enough to launch the Siberian into the air. Her movement was erratic, not following a straight line or a regular ballistic path, as if gravity couldn’t decide how much it wanted to assert itself. With the unpredictable movements, Miss Militia and the PRT agents who fired failed to hit her, at least with anything that mattered. It looked like she was going to land on the roof and be out of reach again.

A blur intercepted the Siberian in midair. For an instant Charlotte saw Alexandria gripping the Siberian’s hair. Then Alexandria spun in a circle swinging the Siberian around and spiking her into the ground faster than the other cape could react. The Siberian might be able to bypass Alexandria’s Brute protections, but Alexandria was still the strongest woman on the planet, and also one of the fastest. Charlotte felt a little thrill watching her stare down the cape that had stolen her eye and killed her teammate. For the first time in this fight she felt truly optimistic about their chances. They had hope and strength and power on their side.

The Siberian didn’t appear impressed. She flopped out of the crater in the road, leaning back to look up at Alexandria. A grin spread across her face, and she waved cheekily. Another round of bombs detonated where she stood, warping, pulverizing, and freezing her surroundings. She didn’t even seem to notice. With one hand she beckoned for Alexandria to come down, and she licked her lips.

Alexandria shot to the ground in answer, and the Siberian swiped with a claw. The attack missed because Alexandria had pulled to an instant stop a few feet above the Siberian’s head. She spun a kick that shattered a warped outcropping of road thrown up by the previous explosion. This sent a shotgun blast of sharp stones peppering the Siberian. There was no impact. The shards that would have struck her skin simply vanished, disintegrating to nothing. Charlotte shuddered to think of what would have happened if Alexandria had tried to kick the Siberian directly.

The Siberian lunged upward, but despite the close quarters Alexandria managed to slide out of the way. The Siberian sailed at the wall of a building, and in the moment she bent her legs to catch herself against it Alexandria shot forward and punched her through the brickwork. It took Charlotte a second to understand what had happened. They knew that the Siberian could tune her interaction with things she touched, either destroying them or sharing her invulnerability. Alexandria had anticipated the moment that she shifted her power and struck with precise enough timing to avoid injury.

“Be ready,” called Alexandria. Barely a second later the Siberian vaulted head first out of a window, stretching out her fingers to catch herself on the roadway. Alexandria blurred as she flew down, but she pulled up at the last instant. The Siberian plowed a deep furrow into the road, almost submerging herself in the asphalt before she switched from destroying the road to grasping it. A bluff and counterbluff in a deadly game of chicken. Deadly for everyone but the Siberian, apparently.

As the Siberian pulled herself upright the lieutenant fired his weapon again. The blue distortion connected and blew the Siberian off her feet, but a ripple traveled back up the beam and detonated inside the barrel. The weapon failure sent shards of _something_ flying out in all directions, but it was a bizarre effect. The explosion itself was near-silent and occurred in relative slow motion—still too fast to really dodge out of the way, but slow enough to see coming. Agent Laramie leaned forward far enough to shield Charlotte from most of the blast with his body. One shadowy blue shard stabbed into Charlotte’s left hand and sank into it. Her palm and three fingers went numb in the tingly way that followed after having a foot fall asleep, the returning blood flow bringing with it a swarm of pinpricks. Except that instead of pins each point of sensation was the independent motion of a finger or wrist or entire hand, spaced in an incomprehensible overlap.

The sensation faded quickly, but Charlotte had only been struck by a single sliver. Laramie, Andrews, and the Lieutenant had all fallen to the ground twitching or twisting. Three other agents appeared incapacitated to some degree, and even Miss Militia was distracted as she tried to sight in on the Siberian’s new position with the stasis gun.

The Siberian had snatched up the body of the agent she had crushed and was swinging it like a weapon. It was as invulnerable as she was and extended her reach and the damage she could do. The Brandish clone had created a long pole out of hard light and was wielding it like a quarterstaff to block the Siberian’s swings. The Siberian was strong enough to power through that defense, but Brandish collapsed into her ball form to dodge any strikes that came too close, and she delayed the Siberian while the closest teams of PRT agents retreated.

Something about the way the Siberian was gripping the corpse’s neck tickled at Charlotte’s mind. The association was obvious, since she’d already been suppressing the memory of finding herself in that same grip, but it was more than that. Or rather, a specific part of that memory.

Alexandria reappeared holding the fallen street light. One end still burned with green flames, and she pointed this end at the Siberian’s back. She shot forward, knocking the Siberian to the ground and pinning her in place with the makeshift spear for a second until the villain twisted and kicked through the pole, severing it.

That image of Alexandria with the spear made the thoughts click together in Charlotte’s mind.

“Crusader,” she whispered.

“Where?” Miss Militia barked, still shaking one arm to try to disperse the phantom sensations from the exploded tinker tech.

“No, I don’t think he’s here,” said Charlotte. “In my dream. He was in one of the memories I saw last night. I touched one of his ghosts, or my clone did, and the smell didn’t intensify. Just like when the Siberian grabbed me. She’s fake, like them. The Siberian’s a projection.”

Miss Militia looked at her sharply and narrowed her eyes. Then she fired off the stasis gun one handed, catching the Siberian, Brandish, and the broken piece of streetlight in its effect.

“Alexandria!” she called, and the black figure turned their way.

With Miss Militia and Alexandria looking at each other, neither of them noticed the way green flames were eating around the surface of the stasis orb.

“Wait,” said Charlotte. She wasn’t loud or convincing enough, though, because Miss Militia kept speaking, even as the Siberian’s head became visible through an expanding hole in the eggshell barrier. Those eyes shifted to look directly at Charlotte.

“Bouquet’s thinker power says that’s not the real Siberian,” said Miss Militia. “She’s a projected minion of a master cape.”

The audible snarl of hatred drew every eye. The Siberian had never been known to speak before, and that noise accompanying an expression of pure fury was confirmation enough that she had been right. As the last of the orb burned away to nothing, the Siberian snatched Brandish’s ball out of the air and bit into it like she was eating a large peach. Brandish unfolded, mangled and screaming, and fell to the ground.

The Siberian’s gaze never shifted. She raised one hand to point at Charlotte, then simply faded from existence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the Siberian: For some reason I had the mistaken idea that William Manton gave his daughter a power vial because she was suffering from a terminal illness, and I had a plan to incorporate that into the way the Siberian behaved and who she attacked in this chapter. (She would have gone after people that Panacea had healed of that disease, since Manton had been denied the miracle cure he wanted.)
> 
> Upon fact checking the source material, it turns out that Manton had divorced his wife and was trying to use the vial to buy his daughter’s affection and/or forgiveness. For the purposes of this story, I’ve decided that means the Siberian targets apparently happy families. Manton is obsessed with ruining the type of relationship that he wanted to have with his daughter. The fact that he also hates divorce lawyers contributed to this unfortunate encounter with the Barnes family.
> 
> On a separate note, my writing time looks to be fairly consistent for the near future, so I will continue to aim for about two updates a month, more when I can manage it.
> 
> FYI I am a big fan of Brandon Sanderson’s cosmere, and I’ve begun liveblogging my readthrough of Rhythm of War, the next installment of the Stormlight Archive. (The book comes out Nov 17, but the publisher is posting preview chapters every week.) If you happen to be a fellow Sanderfan, you may enjoy following along with me over on the 17th Shard fansite. Beware of spoilers, obviously!


	44. Tumble 5.A

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Augment: It’s been over a month since the last update, so a recap may be in order. In the previous chapter, Charlotte helped fight the Siberian, eventually discovering that she was a projection. This chapter shows what was going on across town during that fight, where Burnscar was attacking the docks. Although Cherish is dead, her augmented power has left a permanent master effect on Aisha (fear) and the Charclone (love) who she enthralled before her death back in 4.5)

Alec was used to days that sucked. He might even consider himself a connoisseur of suckitude. (Thanks for that, Dad.) But this was a pretty sucky day to cap off a generally shitty week.

Right now, squatting in a half-flooded basement? Not the high life he’d been looking forward to when Coil started paying him to run his own territory. Bad days weren’t exactly unexpected with the Slaughterhouse doing their thing, but Alec had never counted on his idiot _sister_ joining up with them, tracking him down, and nominating him out of spite.

So now Alec had the personal attention of the rest of the Nine. Burnscar in particular wanted him dead, and she was taking a very literal scorched earth approach to things. The good news was that the duplex Alec was inside hadn’t caught fire yet. The bad news was… basically everything else.

Practically alone, pinned down and surrounded by blocks of burning buildings, no answers on the phone when he tried to call the boss or the team. The day was approaching maximum suckage.

With the body of his one remaining minion, he peered over the edge of the convenience store roof he was lying on. Damian was outside the perimeter of flames that Burnscar had thrown up to hem Alec in, but not very far outside of it. Through his eyes, Alec saw Burnscar step out of a flickering red tongue of flame, scan the street as she bathed it in heat, then vanish, teleporting to another vantage point.

He wasn’t going to be able to sneak out. Unless something distracted her, even spotting himself through Damian wouldn’t give Alec the warning he needed to find a safe path.

What little residual control Alec had over Burnscar was nearly useless. The synthetic nerves Bonesaw had activated kept short circuiting his control and rerouting signals, somehow slipping her whole body out of his grip. It wasn’t just his control that was mitigated, either. His ability to hijack her senses was similarly distorted. He could see some things, inconsistently, or hear or feel her skin, but never clearly. It was a frustrating feeling, like something was on the verge of slotting into place if he could just twist his power the right way. Nothing helped though, and every effort he made to exert his power over her seemed to give her clues to his whereabouts, since she zeroed in on him a bit more with each attempt. Between the fuzzy feedback and the frequent teleports, even seeing through her eyes didn’t help him much in figuring out where she was at any moment.

He punched the buttons again to call the boss. It didn’t even ring. The fancy sat-phone Coil had provided showed strong signal, so the problem had to be on the other end. He called Lisa again, and let it ring through to voicemail.

“You suck,” was all he deigned to say before hanging up. She could listen to his other messages if she wanted to figure out what was going on. Or just engage her power to put together the difficult deduction that Alec might need help if he’d called her a dozen times in a row while the Nine were hunting for him.

He was running out of ideas.

That was when he felt another minion re-enter his range. He seized control immediately, flowing into them and enjoying the spike of panic as they realized they’d just lost their volition again.

With a stretch and a glance to take stock, he realized whose body this was.

“Hey, Babe,” he said through Aisha’s mouth. “Having a good day? ‘Cuz mine’s shit.”

He released control, just riding her senses, and ignored her obvious relief to be in charge of her own body again. Unlike the other people he’d puppeted, Aisha had never had that visceral reaction to his power before.

“Hey,” Aisha said. “Where are you?”

This time Alec only grabbed the muscles she needed to speak.

“Trying to find marshmallows for this massive bonfire Burnscar set for me. Or an escape route before it gets too toasty. Either one.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. This way.” Alec walked her in his direction, which was basically the same way she’d been walking when she entered his range. She’d need to get closer before his exact location would make a difference.

“Um, what’s going on?” Another voice sounded from behind Aisha, and Alec spun her body around to look. It was Bouquet, looking like she’d had the same day Alec did, but with none of his own suave resilience. She was walking down the mostly-empty street two paces behind Aisha. Close enough to be together, but far enough that talking would be awkward. She didn’t have a mask on; neither did Aisha, for that matter.

“Well, long story short, I’m actually—” Alec started.

“Oh, Regent, right,” she interrupted him. “Watermelon, duh.” That non sequitur out of the way, Bouquet narrowed her eyes. “You let him control you? Are you insane?”

Alec let Aisha answer. “I was curious, and I trust him.” In a quieter voice she muttered, “Having second thoughts now.”

“Why now?” asked Bouquet.

“Oh, I dunno. Maybe something about being turned into his sister’s _mindless slave_ for forty-eight hours turned me off of the idea.”

“Wait, Cherie got you?” Alec asked. The spike of terror that accompanied Cherie’s name as it left her lips was intense and unnatural. He recognized the texture of that kind of emotion. “Shit,” he had Aisha say.

“You didn’t even know. She stole me from your apartment, _right in front of you_ , and you didn’t know. I hate my power sometimes.”

“You got away, though. Is she after you?”

“No.” There was a massive surge of satisfaction. “I killed her.”

Bouquet wailed. “ _You_ did it? You told me she tripped!”

“Shit, not again!”

Alec blinked, wondering what had distracted him. He had Damian survey the neighborhood again. The building next to his duplex was burning now. Time was running out. He started to dial Lisa again.

Suddenly a body popped up in his senses. He flowed into it, looked around.

“Oh, hey. What were we talking about?”

“How to save your sorry ass from Burnscar,” Aisha answered. Then, under her breath she added, “Also, your sister is dead. I’ll tell you more later.”

“This is the weirdest conversation,” said Bouquet. “I still can’t believe you let him do that.”

Aisha ignored the other girl. “What’s even the plan, here? I don’t think I can take down Burnscar.”

“Killing her would be nice, but we mostly just need a way to sneak me out. I was mostly hoping you could come up with a distraction that keeps her occupied long enough that I can run a few blocks without being spotted. But now I realize you’ve got Bouquet here—were you at the Palanquin when we talked about her power? She boosts other capes. I’m betting she could let you hide all three of us. We could just stroll down the middle of the road and be fine.”

Aisha shook her head. “We tried it on the way here.”

“We did? I don’t remember that.”

“Yeah. That’s kinda my thing. But sneaking up to touch you when my power’s active means that you don’t know I exist. Seems like that stops the boost from working. I couldn’t do anything different when I touched you.”

“Huh. That’s weird. Did we try when your power’s off?”

“No, but what’s the point? You only improve powers, so if I can’t use mine while you boost me there’s no benefit.”

“Yeah, sorry. Figures I’d still be useless.”

Aisha rolled her eyes, but Alec recognized a swell of sympathy as she twisted her upper body to look back. After a second Alec stopped walking and returned her control.

“Hey, Char, we talked about this, right? We were both Mastered. Those feelings are still there. I don’t know if they’ll ever go away. They are real, but they aren’t _ours_. Cherish may have made herself your whole world, but you can’t just hate yourself now that she’s gone.”

Again, Aisha’s heart jumped with a spike of fear when she mentioned Cherie’s name, but she powered through it. Bouquet, on the other hand, reacted differently. Her whole face lit up with a brilliant smile of near-worship. That expression dissolved into grief a second later, then transitioned into the same depressive frown she’d been wearing before.

“You aren’t useless, Charlotte. I shouldn’t have just brushed you off like that. It’s worth a shot and will only take a few seconds.” She offered her hand. After a moment of hesitation, Bouquet took it.

It was a strange sensation to feel another cape’s power from the inside. Alec hadn’t done it very many times, and he’d never been able to feel Aisha using hers—at least not that he remembered. Restraining her power, though, was a slippery feeling like a smooth stone trying to escape from her grip. Except now, holding Bouquet’s hand, that stone came apart into a hundred equally smooth fragments. It wasn’t any more difficult to hold on to the collective, but she now had the ability to release them individually.

Looking down the road to where an Asian family was hurrying away from the docks carrying picture frames and blankets, Aisha let go of a few of the stones. As they slipped free, Alec noticed a nearly undetectable increase in energy thrumming through Aisha, through her nerves and muscles, as though being forgotten by others was energizing to her.

Aisha pulled her hand away, and those smaller pebbles reabsorbed into the larger mass, which had already become a single unit once again.

“Well, that’s neat,” said Aisha, taking Bouquet’s hand again. “I can pick and choose targets for my power now. That’s actually super cool. There’s a ton of ways the team could use this; even more if I didn’t have to be in contact with you for it to work. Still, I don’t think I can hide anyone else with my power. Although…”

Aisha opened her metaphorical grip, letting all but a few of the pebbles slip free. There was a bit more energy buzzing through her, now. Still subtle, but not so small that Alec might have been imagining it.

“That’s strange,” Aisha said. “I was trying to go invisible for everyone but you two. So why are there three…?”

One more pebble was nudged free, and Aisha fell silent. Not just silent in her talking, but silent all through. Her breathing, her eye movements, the little twitches and shifts in balance that everyone made, they all just faded away. She nearly collapsed to the ground, but Alec seized her muscles and kept her upright, kept her breathing.

“Aisha?” he asked through her voice. “Aisha, what’s wrong?”

There was no response, not even involuntarily. He slapped her in the face with her free hand, but she still didn’t react.

He almost pulled free of Bouquet, but if he forgot about Aisha and this somehow _didn’t_ wear off, nobody else would even know she needed help. Instead, he reached out for the bit of her power she had released to start this whole problem. He couldn’t find it, couldn’t tell it apart from all the others. Maybe if he’d been paying more attention, but….

No time. He just grabbed as many as he could, suppressing all the little bits of power he could at once. He wasn’t practiced, with the power, though, and it took some time to identify each little piece with his attention. Fortunately, Bouquet seemed to recognize that something was wrong and she withdrew her boost even as Alec caught hold of the majority of the loose pebbles, such that they all congealed together.

Aisha tried to gasp, to jerk away from Bouquet. Alec let her, gave her back control and just watched as she sat in the middle of the street and hyperventilated, knees pulled up to her chest. She started to beat at the rough asphalt with one fist, but he stopped her.

“What, what happened?” stuttered Bouquet.

Aisha, still gasping, pushed herself back up to her feet. Alec helped.

“That was… that was hell. I fucking forgot that _I_ existed.”

“Oh, God. I’m so sorry. That’s horrifying!”

Aisha seemed to gather herself. “Don’t wanna talk about it. No offense if I don’t use your power ever again, though.”

“I should leave before I get someone killed.”

“Charlotte, follow me,” Aisha ordered, marching off. “We still have to save Regent’s toasty butt.”

Her voice was confident and firm. If he hadn’t been riding along her own nerves Alec might not have noticed how shaky her steps were, or the way her heart was hammering in her chest. Alec took charge of walking, smoothed it out to the point that there was no tremor to hide.

“So if we’re not gonna use stealth mode to sneak me out,” he said, “it’s time to think of a distraction, right? Got any ideas?”

Aisha nodded emphatically at “distraction.”

“What are we dealing with?” she asked when he returned her voice to her. “I assume you’re somewhere at the base of that pillar of smoke toward the docks?”

“Yeah. There’s a dozen buildings here in the middle that aren’t burning yet, but that’s only because she keeps bouncing around the perimeter to make sure I don’t sneak out.”

“You’re saying that she is using rapid fire teleports to hem you in?”

“Yes. No, wait, are you making puns?”

“No,” she denied, but the smirk he could feel on her lips said otherwise.

“Screw you! You’d better get me out of this, because I am _not_ going to let the last words I hear be some lame-ass pun.”

“Great motivating speech. You’ve really fired me up.”

“I can just keep you from talking, you know. Or make you hold your breath until you pass out.”

“Good to know. That answers one of my burning questions.”

Alec turned Aisha around so she was walking backward and faced Bouquet directly. “Just so you know,” he said, “I’m not actually being mastered, I’m just dangerously unstable. Don’t be surprised if I decide to kill myself violently after making one too many bad jokes.”

Bouquet just looked more disturbed at that, didn’t even smile. Still, he could feel Aisha trying to laugh, so he’d take it as a win.

“Anyway,” Aisha tried to say, but Alec was still controlling her lungs so no sound came out. She flipped him off, or at least his general direction, then tried again. “Anyway, we’ve gotta be what, five minutes from you? How can we help?”

Five minutes was probably right, at this pace. Alec had explained his power in detail when she’d expressed curiosity about experimenting with it. He could maintain control of someone at least halfway across the city, but once the connection dropped due to distance or sleep, he couldn’t reacquire them until he was within about half a mile.

“All of my ideas require more people. Is it just you? I’ve been trying to call the team but Lisa’s ghosting me. Can’t reach the boss either.”

“We haven’t found anyone. Neither of us have our phones, so we’ve been checking each person’s territory. Checked yours and my bro’s first, and we just came from Skitter’s. All of the bases were empty. We were going to try the Travelers next, drop in on Genesis’ place. Speaking of, what are you doing this far north? Burnscar didn’t chase you all the way here, did she?”

“Nah. I didn’t get back to my base until the next day after Coil saved our asses from the Siberian. Turns out Shatterbird’s scream destroyed the fancy locks, and all my toys were gone. Fortunately, Jenny hadn’t run far enough to get out of range. I’ve been having her drive me around today fishing for the rest of them. Collected Damian this morning, but the next person to re-enter my range was Burnscar. That didn’t go well. Grabbed her without realizing who it was, and thirty seconds later the car was on fire.”

“Who’s Jenny?”

“You know Jenny. Frumpy forty-something with a pixie cut. Blonde. Apparently shit at running away. The one we decided to say was a drug dealer if the dork ever asked why we picked everyone.”

“Her name’s Jeanine, you dumbass.”

“Sounds like I was close enough, then, don’t you think?”

There was a sound from above him in the duplex, and Alec looked from Damian’s perspective. Burnscar was standing on the roof of the next townhome over, blasting streams of fire at all the nearby buildings that hadn’t caught yet. Not good.

“Bad news, guys. She just decided it was time to flush me out. Not sure how long it will take before I have to get out of here.”

Aisha nodded and picked up the pace. “We’ll put the conversation on the back burner, then. So, it’s the three of us plus Damian and Jeanine? We should be able to make something work.”

“Ah, not quite,” Alec corrected her. “Just Damian. Jenny was the distraction while me and Damian bailed from the car. Burnscar crisped her.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah.”

“Suddenly I’m less eager to try distracting Burnscar for you.”

“If only Shadow Stalker hadn’t already left the city,” said Alec. “I’d have loved to throw her against this psycho.”

Aisha and Bouquet finally reached the corner of an alley half a block from the conflagration. Aisha peered around it to look. He could feel the heat on her skin even from that distance.

There was silence for a few moments. Burnscar appeared once in Aisha’s sight, vanishing back into the flames almost immediately.

“Well, crap,” said Aisha.

Then Bouquet spoke up. “Did you only try to call your own team? Everyone agreed to a truce to cooperate against the Slaughterhouse. Why not call the Protectorate? Or the other villains?”

Honestly, that was a pretty good question. He hadn’t actually considered it.

“Didn’t save any of the numbers in my phone,” he admitted, which was also true.

“You can reach the Protectorate through a regular 911 dispatch.”

Okay, fair, but she didn’t have to make it sound so obvious. “No point,” he said. “This is big enough to have caught their attention. Truce or no, they aren’t going to hurry up their plans to confront a member of the S9 just to save one villain.”

Aisha rolled her eyes at him while he talked, so he rolled them right back.

Bouquet took a breath to argue, but then she stopped, sniffed. Sniffed again.

“Something wrong?” asked Aisha.

“I’m not sure. There’s another cape doing something nearby. Something big. Smells like pineapple, which is a new one, so they aren’t someone I’ve met before.”

Aisha looked around, and Alec used Damian to do the same.

Aisha was the first to hear it—a whistling in the air, like something falling quickly. She looked up and saw a blue speck growing larger. It was surrounded by a dozen shimmering points of light that twinkled as they fell. They were descending from very near the sun, which made it hard to make out anything about them.

Fortunately, Damian had better a better angle, and now that Alec knew where to look he found the cape easily.

“She’s a flyer,” he said through Aisha. “Looks like she’s wearing a fur collar or something, has a cloud of translucent fractally things around her.”

“Wait, really?” asked Bouquet. “Rime is here?”

Rime, if that’s who it was, slowed herself and a portion of her fractal satellites, while the other two thirds of the shapes sped up and rocketed into the ground in a precise perimeter that ringed the burning neighborhood. When they struck the ground each one erupted into a spreading glacier twenty feet high and just as thick. The ice spread into the roads, around each property, and seemed to grow into the buildings.

Steam and ash billowed up in an immense cloud that obscured everything for long seconds. As it slowly cleared, Alec got sequential views of the scene. First, from Aisha, a wall of ice across the street just a few hundred feet away. The buildings that had been aflame were entirely quenched, and encased in enough ice that it would take an enormous amount of heat to get them started again. As she watched, though, a building with ice covering one side but not the other collapsed under the enormous weight. It had probably already been damaged due to Leviathan, but then again so had everything else nearby. If one of those glaciers crushed his duplex, Alex would not be getting out of his basement.

Second, as more steam blew away, Damian caught a glimpse of Rime’s second wave of fractal bombs falling in a tighter ring. The effect was smaller, but no less dramatic. Steam and ash swirled through the air, and the orange glow that had illuminated the smoke from below dimmed dramatically.

Finally, after this newer steam cloud also dissipated, Alec got a fuzzy and intermittent view through Burnscar’s own eyes. She was surrounded by a massive bonfire, an entire building alight, and she was staring up at Rime who hovered above with her hands held out, generating a new ice fractal in each one. Alec felt and heard Burnscar snarl, and as the ice descended she blasted them with a searing heat.

One of the bombs was falling directly toward Burnscar and caught the brunt of the heat. It cracked under the onslaught and detonated early, tiny shards of ice scattering in all directions. The other was off-target by five or ten yards—at least until it curved in the air and was suddenly flying almost sideways. Burnscar’s reflexes were too fast, and she was gone before Alec even recognized what had happened.

She stepped out of a flaming doorway down the street, looking back at her previous spot to see the eruption of ice cover most, though not all, of the bonfire she’d built up.

“Looks like Rime might have this handled,” Alec said through Aisha.

“Good. I didn’t want to go in there.”

“Can you tell me what she’s doing?” Bouquet asked.

“Sure. She’s flying and throwing ice around.” asked Alec.

“That’s not… I mean….”

“You gonna sneak out now?” Aisha cut in. “Looks like a good distraction to me.”

“Nah. If Rime’s winning, it might be better to wait until this is over. I don’t like the idea of trying to climb over a mountain of ice while Burnscar is still popping around.”

“Are you sure she’s winning?” asked Bouquet. She sounded nervous.

Alec took a moment to watch Burnscar teleport again, this time to an even smaller island of burning timbers.

“Sure seems like it,” he said.

“Okay. Good.”

“How did you know who she was?” asked Aisha.

“Oh. Um, well she’s kind of a big name in the Jewish community. Alexandria’s second, you know. There’s more Jewish capes, obviously, but she, Haywire, and Luminal are the ones who are open about it in their identities, and also big enough to be household names.”

“Who’s Luminal? And Haywire’s dead, right?”

“Never mind. Doesn’t matter right now.”

“What I’m hearing you say,” said Aisha, “is that I can’t count on Rime to be a fan of Christmas in July. So we’d better enjoy this while it lasts.”

“Unless Hanukkah in July is a thing?” suggested Alec.

“Those aren’t comparable holidays, even if they’re at the same time of year.” Bouquet’s reply was automatic, aggravated and disinterested at the same time.

“Sounds like a no,” said Aisha.

Through Burnscar’s eyes Alec saw a jet of flame obliterate an airborne ice crystal that shattered and sent shards exploding out to impact an identical crystal that had been following directly behind the first. This second crystal blossomed into an immense fractal snowflake the size of a building before ice filled in the spaces and converted it into a massive spiky block of ice hurtling toward the street.

Alec took that instant to seize control again, forcing Burnscar’s body to step away from the flames she could use to teleport. It only lasted half a second before she slipped from his grasp again. He felt a heavy icicle stab into her shoulder before a wash of flame at her feet allowed her to escape being crushed or impaled.

The impact was massive. The tremor was strongest in Alec’s basement, as the shattering ice obliterated the duplex’s front wall and visibly shifted the joists over his head. Even at a distance, though, Damian felt his convenience store shake on one edge of the district, and the shockwave pounded at Aisha’s stomach in a way that reminded Alec of a fireworks display that Nikos had “commissioned” one time, showy explosions detonating a little too close for comfort.

Burnscar hadn’t gone far. She swiped a fistful of broken glass from the road while sending stream after stream of fire in Rime’s direction. Rime dodged easily, spiraling around the largest jet of flame to close the distance. Then, even as the short-lived jet of flame guttered and died, Burnscar suddenly slipped from its center just behind Rime. With the fire extinguished, Rime didn’t have any warning when Burnscar stabbed out from her blindspot with the jagged glass shards. Stifling a cry of pain, Rime spun in the air fast enough to bludgeon Burnscar away from her with a shield of ice. Before she could press the attack, though, Burnscar conjured a burst of flame around herself and vanished. Rime was left listing sideways with bloody tracks across her upper back.

Alec tried to track Burnscar through four back-to-back teleports, but he had no landmarks to reference. All he could tell was that she was still inside the ring of ice.

“What’s that rumbling?” Aisha asked, and Alec focused back on her.

“That was a flying iceberg,” he said. “Couldn’t you see it falling?”

“Yeah, but the ground is still shaking.”

She stood very still, and Alec could feel the vibrations through her feet. “Huh.”

He felt her brow furrow. “I think it sounds like when Bitch’s dogs are bulked up and running together. Maybe my brother sent her to find us.”

If so, that would be awesome. Alec’s hiding spot wasn’t going to endure much more punishment. He had Damian stand from his cover and search for any sign of Rachel and the team.

“Where are you?” he muttered through Damian. For a long moment there was nothing except the flashes of light from Burnscar’s renewed duel with Rime. Then, three large shapes barreled around a corner, heading straight for him.

They were not Rachel’s dogs.

These things were gross in a totally different way from the exposed muscle and bone that were hallmarks of Rachel’s power. Instead, the biggest one put Alec in mind of a pillbug that had tried to grow up to be a panther, and somewhere along the way ended up forty feet long. The other two were totally different shapes but shared a certain aesthetic involving sleek black armor, dozens of eyes, and acid drool.

“Why the hell are there _three_ Crawlers?!” he shouted through Aisha. Damian took a flying leap as one Crawler pounced on another and the pair rolled forward utterly demolishing the convenience store. Damian landed badly, a shot of pain lurching up from his ankle, and Alec lost balance in that body when the leg gave out.

“He got cloned by Mother.”

“Who?” he asked Bouquet. “Your Mom is a cape?”

“She means Echidna,” explained Aisha, rolling her eyes.

Actually, that didn’t explain anything. “Who’s Echidna?” he asked. Through Burnscar’s eyes he saw Rime flinch and retreat skyward when the Crawlers appeared below her.

“Seriously? She’s been running all over the city for the past two days, cloning capes. How did you miss that?”

“I dunno. It’s not like I’ve seen any clones.”

Aisha swung her head to look pointedly at Bouquet. “ _Hellooo_.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Naw. A bunch of others got cloned too. I know I saw a Menja copy and a second Jack Slash before… before.”

Two of Jack Slash. And both of them would be after Alec thanks to his _dear_ sister. “Well, shit.”

“On the bright side, I don’t think the Jacks were getting along. I doubt they’ll work together or anything.”

“Great, so we’ll just have two serial killers trying to outcompete one another. Your bright side sucks.”

One of the Crawlers, this one with prominent blade arms and face tendrils, tumbled from a hit and rolled toward Burnscar. She teleported out of the way, but Alec was watching for his opportunity. He didn’t bother controlling her any of her muscles, he just reached through their connection and flexed her power. The little squawk of fear she let out at being teleported right back into harm’s way was a beautiful sound, and he smirked with her lips as the side of Crawler’s face thudded into her chest. He felt a rib crack, and droplets of something caustic sizzled painfully on her skin.

She flashed away, but Alec could bring her back, finish her off. He watched through her eyes, pushing through the interference to find a patch of flames near Crawler. _There!_ One of them had just crashed through the glacier wall opposite from where they had entered, scattering burning debris in front of him in the process. Alec gripped Burnscar with his power, preparing to teleport her, and the image through her eyes clarified. Crawler, bigger than Leviathan had been, about to crash into a familiar building.

In an instant Alec was in full control, Aisha’s body lurching into a sudden sprint. He clamped a hand around Bouquet’s wrist, ignoring Aisha’s spike of fear at the contact. He just kept her power off and pulled the other girl into a run. The building shattered mere feet behind them, and he felt debris pelt Aisha’s back. They kept running, heavy impacts sounding as a second Crawler leapt atop the first and attempted to maul him.

Alec released Aisha two streets over, letting her gasp for breath on her own. Feeling out with his power, Burnscar was gone. She’d teleported out of range. That left him with only Damian. Checking the young man over, it was clear this body wasn’t going to be running any time soon. Probably not even limping quickly. It wasn’t worth bringing him along, despite his attractive face and build. Alec had no intention of nursing someone back to health after an injury. If Damian was still around in the city after recovering, Alec could pick him up again.

Aisha looked up to watch Rime and a second flier, this one a man in orange and yellow, move off in pursuit of the Crawlers, who had continued toward downtown.

“So,” he said through Aisha. “Want to come help me out of this basement now?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. Work has gotten much busier, so I’m not sure what the update frequency will look like for the next month. Hopefully not too infrequent, but I’ve discovered that writing time and sleeping time are not as interchangeable as one might think.


	45. Tumble 5.7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Augment: One Charlotte helped Miss Militia and Alexandria fight the Siberian, and another was present while Alec faced off with Burnscar. Meanwhile, in another part of town, a third Charlotte encounters villains of her own…

Charlotte was coming to the end of her patience. She’d tried ignoring Trickster, in the hopes that he would get bored without a reaction and stop blatantly antagonizing her, but it wasn’t working. He exhaled cigarette smoke in her direction, once again, and she turned away, leaning on the fire escape’s railing. She peered out over the empty street. Maybe something would happen to distract him.

Nothing. Nobody approached, no vehicles passed by.

The smoke was annoying, of course, but not that big a deal. She couldn’t smell it anyway. The problem was that Trickster was an asshole who apparently handled stress by smoking and by messing with other people. The fact that his power smelled like he’d fallen in a swamp made him all the more unpleasant to be around.

She also remembered him helping to take her hostage when the heroes confronted Coil, so she might have been a bit biased.

She turned back to glance at him, just in time to catch a particularly well-aimed stream right in the face. She’d been breathing in, so it immediately set her to coughing. The asshole chuckled.

“Stop that,” she growled. A little annoyance was one thing, but she wasn’t going to put up with this.

“Don’t see why you even care. Not like you’ll live long enough to worry about lung cancer.”

Charlotte refused to engage with him on that topic. One of the first things that had shown just how awful he was had been an argument Charlotte overheard between him and Noelle. He was afraid of the clones and had been very vocal about wanting to kill them. Noelle had (way too patiently, in Charlotte’s opinion) helped him see that none of them were about to go on a murder spree, as evidenced by the past several days. Why he even thought that was likely was mystifying to Charlotte. Even now, Trickster still considered them mere cannon fodder for when the heroes inevitably attacked.

“I don’t care what you think,” she said more firmly. “Stop it unless you want me to bring it up with Noelle.”

He scoffed. “Yeah? How’d that go for you the last four times?”

It’d gotten her here, hadn’t it? She’d seen right away how much of a jerk “Krouse” was and tried to convince Noelle he wasn’t good enough for his supposed girlfriend. She’d pointed out all the ways he fell short, explaining that a nice girl like Noelle could do so much better. At first Noelle hadn’t listened at all, but eventually she had assigned Charlotte to help Trickster keep watch outside the mall. Ostensibly it was so Charlotte could see what he was actually like and “stop bringing it up,” but she knew it was actually so she could keep an eye on him and report back in detail about his many bad qualities.

Noelle’s relationship with Krouse was simply bizarre. She’d had friends who dated losers before, but they’d always gotten something out of it, whether emotional validation or just physical affection. Neither of those mattered in this case. Noelle was obviously wonderful, and was surrounded by people who loved her, while Trickster was a hostage-taking waste of space. As for physical affection, Noelle couldn’t even hold his hand without making _more_ jerks to deal with. Thank God she’d been smart enough to avoid that, despite however many years they’d apparently been together. One Trickster was already too many.

“I have no idea what she sees in you,” she muttered, unable to keep her annoyance entirely inside.

Trickster scoffed. “You’re one to talk, fatty.”

Charlotte shrugged. She remembered caring a lot about her weight before, constantly feeling judged by people who were naturally thin. Now those worries were gone. This body was identical to her first one, as far as she could tell, but it felt comfortably _her_. Maybe that was just a side effect of being a clone, though? The comfort of still being the same person, even if she was a new instance of herself. It would have been disconcerting to be cloned and end up as someone else. Did that even make sense?

It was a little odd that she wasn’t bothered by the insult, though. Was it possible that Noelle had altered her emotions when making her? Doubtful, but less self-recrimination would be a welcome change if so.

Trickster interrupted her thoughts with a terse, “Someone’s coming.”

His brackish scent bubbled, like a thick liquid coming to a boil, and he was gone. In his place was a broken air conditioning unit. Charlotte looked and saw his stupid hat sticking out over the edge of a roof several buildings away. He appeared to be talking to some people below him in the road, but Charlotte couldn’t hear anything from this distance.

Thirty seconds later the smell of bubbling mud heralded his reappearance. “They’re coming to the main entrance. Meet me there.” Then he was gone again.

Honestly, Charlotte preferred him to be curt. It cut down the amount of interaction she had to have with him. She pulled open the door and went back inside to make her way down to the front of the mall.

Charlotte got to the top of the stairs just in time for Menja to stride by at the bottom. She was shrinking down to only nine or ten feet tall in order to fit easily in the hallway, emanating an aura of marmalade and formaldehyde as she did so. She ignored Charlotte, but the five people trailing after her gave Charlotte sidelong glances. None of them had identifying tattoos, but that was only because marks like that hadn’t been duplicated in the cloning process. They were obviously still affiliated with the Empire to be working closely with Menja. Noelle had tried to get at least one of Charlotte’s copies to help with Menja’s assigned task of stockpiling food and water. Obviously they had each refused.

Menja and the others were heading to the entrance as well. Trickster must have summoned them. Charlotte kept her distance following behind, so she was the last to arrive. Trickster was standing in the doorway, already wrapping up whatever conversation they’d been having.

“… only one of you. The others will have to wait just inside the door.”

“That’s not a problem.” The answering voice was a woman’s, but surprisingly deep. “In fact, I suggest that Eraser stay outside. He still needs practice keeping his power in check. Wouldn’t want to cause a misunderstanding by accidentally obliterating someone.”

Trickster rolled his eyes. “Menja, watch them,” he ordered. Menja sneered, but she gestured to her followers to obey. The last time Menja made a fuss about taking orders from someone with brown skin, Noelle had made it clear that Menja would be lucky to keep all her limbs if she brought it up again. The growling reminder that “I’m always hungry” had apparently been effective.

Trickster stepped aside to allow the other cape through the door. She was dressed in grungy jeans and a dirty gray t-shirt. She wasn’t wearing a mask, but her long black hair draped forward over her face. Before she could examine the woman more closely, Charlotte was distracted by the man behind her. It was Whizzer, the teleporter she’d stabbed at the other mall. She grabbed the handle of the duplicate cheese knife in her back pocket (one of her other selves had tracked down a stash of them in a stockroom and shared them around) but didn’t pull it out. He didn’t seem to notice Charlotte, focused instead on Menja, who’d stepped outside and started growing taller again.

“You come with me,” said Trickster as he passed Charlotte. She was only too happy to fall in step with the apparent Merchant cape and get away from the Empire group. Her pleasant toffee scent was a nice relief after half a day in Trickster’s company.

Partway down the hall, the woman turned to her. “You’re Charlotte Raimi, right?”

“Um, yeah. How did you…” Charlotte took a closer look. “Wait. Tabby? Margo’s sister?”

“ _Tabitha_. I haven’t gone by Tabby in years.”

“I thought your family had moved away.” In fact, she distinctly remembered the mingled envy and disappointment when Margo had announced at Hebrew school that her dad had found a job opportunity that would take them to Connecticut.

“Yeah. They did.” Tabitha didn’t elaborate.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to bring up secret identity stuff.” Tabitha had brought it up first, but neither of them were in costume, so it was kind of ambiguous what was okay to talk about.

“Oh, I don’t care about that shit. I’m Whirlygig all the time, so there’s no reason to keep all that junk secret. I’d never get to use my real name if I tried.”

“Huh. So, can I ask if Margo is okay? I haven’t heard anything from her since—"

“Probably,” Tabitha interrupted. “She was fine last I heard. Look, what I wanna know is how’s the whole clone thing working out for you?”

“Um, fine?” That was a fairly personal question to ask, and Charlotte had avoided thinking too hard about the existential parts of it. Still, she decided to be honest about her concerns. “I think I might be more laid-back than before, but I’m not sure.”

“Cool, cool. Good to hear. Hey, how much farther, Top Hat?”

Trickster glanced back and with a quick bubble of mud Tabitha was replaced with a wooden bench from the other end of the hall. He gave it a few seconds to sink in, then swapped her back.

“About that much farther every time you get my name wrong, Swirlypig.”

Tabitha snorted. “Classy.”

Trickster just turned away and led them towards the food court. Before long, the rich scent of formaldehyde welcomed them back to Noelle’s central hub. It smelled like home. Then they rounded the corner and saw Mother in all her glory.

“Woah,” said Tabitha, which really summed it up.

One of the many, many neat things about Noelle was that she could make eye contact with all three of them at once. No need to swivel her gaze between them and split her attention or priorities. Charlotte smiled back at the snake-ish face that was grinning at her, then waved at the two copies of herself currently sitting up in the nest of tentacles behind Noelle’s human half.

“What’s this, Trickster?” asked Noelle.

“This is Whirlygig. One of three capes from the Merchants who arrived at our doorstep. She says she has a deal to propose.”

“Oh, really? Do tell.”

Tabitha shook herself. “Right. Right.” She brushed her hair off of one side of her face, revealing a thin scar below a pale blue eye. “Like he said, I’m Whirlygig. I’m assuming leadership of the Merchants, now that Skidmark and Squealer are gone. I’m here to negotiate an alliance with the Brood.”

“You know what we call ourselves, so you’ve done at least the minimum of footwork on this. I presume this alliance would go beyond the current Truce against the Slaughterhouse Nine?”

“Definitely. The way I see it, you’re set to become the new power in the Bay. If that means you supplant those Nazi fucks then I’m all for it. I just want to make sure we can run our own affairs in our own space.”

If Noelle could make eye contact with all of them at once, she could listen to all of them at once, too. Charlotte edged around to Noelle’s flank where a new head was starting to emerge. It was smaller than the others, but with proportionally large ears. It might become a bat once it finished growing.

“I see,” said Noelle. “And what would the Merchants have to offer in this exchange?”

“A few things. We have manpower, connections, resources. We don’t scare the Protectorate out of their minds, so we can run errands for you without inviting Thinker scrutiny or PRT interference. And there are common enemies to work against after the Nine are gone.”

Charlotte leaned in close, feeling the comforting warmth of Mother’s fever-hot bulk. “Trickster’s the worst,” she whispered. “You really need to dump him.” Noelle couldn’t respond, obviously, but one of the ears flicked so Charlotte assumed she’d been heard.

“Common enemies?” Noelle asked Whirlygig.

“Yeah. Word on the street is that the Undersiders broke the Endbringer Truce. I didn’t believe it at first, since that’s a one way ticket to getting exploded by Eidolon and they’re still around. But then they aimed the Nine at us while we were supposed to be fighting together. Killed a bunch of Merchants, then claimed it wasn’t their fault since it was indirect. I hear they did something to move against Coil, too, despite the Truce.”

“I’m aware,” said Noelle drily.

Charlotte half listened while she continued whispering about what she’d seen while watching Trickster, or rather, keeping watch with him.

“So that’s true, then,” said Whirlygig. “Looks like a pattern to me. Bend the rules to the breaking point, then get out of it with plausible deniability. I’m betting Tattletale tells them exactly how far they can push things and still get away with it.”

“Tattletale’s dead,” said Charlotte, speaking up loud enough that everyone could hear her. “I saw it happen.”

Whirlygig nodded. “So they won’t know where the line is next time and they’ll probably push too far. Personally, I don’t plan to wait for them to turn me and mine into collateral damage the next time they have an excuse, even if they get burned for it afterward. I want them gone from Brockton Bay.”

“That sounds like something we can discuss, but there are a lot of hurdles before we get to that point. Why have this conversation now? Why are you here?”

“Well, like I said that’s just one of the things we can help each other with. I’m a capitalist, and this is an investment that could pay off. I want to get in on the ground floor.”

“Hmm.” Noelle seemed to consider for a few moments, long enough that Whirlygig started fidgeting.

Charlotte started to resume her account of Trickster’s failings, and the two bat ears twitched hard enough to accidentally hit her in the face. That probably meant she was getting through to Noelle.

“What exactly are you proposing?” Noelle asked.

Tabitha straightened up. “I want you to clone me.”

“What?!” Trickster looked astounded. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, I definitely am. I _could_ assume control of the Merchants by myself, but it’d be dicey. Trainwreck may be a shitty tinker, but he _is_ a tinker. I’d rather have someone watching my back, and who better to do that than me?”

Noelle shifted forward, looming down over Tabitha. The closest mouth was the lion’s, and it gaped open to let a too-long, slavering tongue quest forward.

“And what if I were to simply eat you and send a clone or two back in your place? I’d still get my alliance with Whirlygig, no?”

Tabitha shrugged. “That’d suck. I’m not a fan of pain. But I’ve already confirmed from Char here that there’s continuity of consciousness, so from my perspective I’d still be getting what I want. I’d take over the Merchants and run it the way I want.”

She waited a beat to let that sink in, then continued. “But I think you’re smarter than that. Word will get around on how this goes down, either way. You’re a lot more likely to get willing allies if you don’t kill everyone who approaches you. You already know this, or things would have gone very differently when you were running all over the city. I’ve pieced together the information and misinformation that I can, and I see a strategist. Someone who doesn’t throw away people who can help her.”

Noelle nodded slowly. “Well reasoned. I’ll want to talk to you about what you figured out. Still, that’s quite the gamble to take.”

“Nah. Not really. Like I said, I get what I want either way. Plus, I brought a down payment. I know a girl’s gotta eat.”

“A… down payment? Money isn’t especially useful at the moment.”

“Not money. I’ll have my guy bring it in.” Tabitha pulled out a radio and spoke into it. “Hey, Whizzer. We’re ready for you.”

There was a short period where nothing happened. Then a series of shouts were audible through the halls, coming closer until the smell of rotten potato peels welled up from the floor and suddenly Whizzer was there holding two of the big 33-gallon recycling bins. Both of them were overflowing with…

“Is that a bunch of dead pets?” Charlotte asked.

Trickster had recoiled holding his nose, while Noelle lunged forward, the two closest mouths fighting for the first bite while she braced her legs to keep from moving the rest of the distance.

Whizzer let out an “Eep” and vanished, and Noelle fell on the bins of animal corpses with a slew of frankly disturbing noises. Because she was watching for it, Charlotte could see the way the bat head filled out slightly to become more fully fleshed. Maybe not a bat, actually. There were weird tendrils growing out of the nose, kind of like a mole.

“There were a few animal shelters, pet shops, and the like that didn’t get flooded but were still forgotten after Leviathan. So there’s quite a few dogs, cats, and birds that have died more recently than three weeks ago. We gathered up two more of those bins, but you might need to have your own people bring them in here. I doubt Whizzer wants to come back.”

Noelle moaned a little with satisfaction. “You can get more?”

“We’ll figure something out,” Tabitha said with a wide smile. “So, we got a deal?”

Noelle collected herself, and glanced thoughtfully down to where Charlotte stood. One eyebrow quirked up. “I have a few conditions, but yes. You have your alliance.”

\---0---

As the newly appointed liaison for the promised alliance, Charlotte found herself walking across town with Eraser and three Whirlygigs. It was hard to walk. She was a few short steps from panicking at the prospect of being back among the Merchants. She’d almost refused, but Mother had insisted. It felt good to know that she’d gained Mother’s trust enough to be given an important task like this. It showed that Noelle had finally listened to what she was saying about Trickster.

Charlotte was glad to be helpful. She just wished the reward for that had been staying closer to Noelle rather than being sent halfway across the city with capes who terrified her.

It helped some that half of the capes here were Tabitha. It helped even more that two of those Tabithas smelled of formaldehyde on top of their own toffee scent.

It also helped that Whizzer wasn’t around. He had decided to make his own way back, claiming that it was tiresome to walk when he could teleport. Charlotte was inclined to believe him, even if he _had_ said that shortly after she’d reflexively pulled out her knife when he suddenly teleported in front of her face. She knew she wasn’t an intimidating person regardless of whether she was armed.

Thankfully, he had backed down from calling her Spew. It was nice of Tabitha to back her up on that.

“So, you’re the one who stabbed Phil?” asked Tabitha. The other two were up ahead talking with Eraser, though they were keeping a careful distance from him. The sporadic bursts of light and screeching blackboard sound effects that accompanied the annihilation of something near him made the reason self-evident. The glowing white smoke that leaked from his eyes, mouth, and hair was just an additional reminder not to get close.

“No. I didn’t exist two days ago. I’m not letting him blame me for that.”

Tabitha laughed. “Yeah, well I didn’t exist an hour ago, but I’m still taking credit for everything I did before that. Don’t worry, I’m not complaining. In fact, I should thank you. Phil is one of Adam’s buddies—that’s Skidmark by the way—and he needed to be taken down a peg. I’m glad he has enough regen to not die from it, because it would suck to lose his mobility, but having him out of action for a couple days made it a lot easier to make my own bid for control. The old guard from before Leviathan don’t like me much, but I’ve got enough support from the people like me who joined up after. Without Whizzer making a move, they only had Trainwreck, and he’s got like negative charisma. One of those monster mutant capes, and a boring dude besides. So yeah. It’s all good.”

They walked in silence for a minute. Charlotte watched the giant pillar of smoke that had been rising from somewhere close to the Docks ever since before they left the mall. Someone was flying around above it, confirming that it was probably a cape fight. Charlotte was glad to be well away from that. Though, if the Slaughterhouse Nine hadn’t been attacking the city, she was pretty sure that walking down the road surrounded by Merchant capes would have left her hyperventilating.

“I seriously can’t believe Mother talked me into joining the gang that kidnapped me,” Charlotte finally said. “I must be insane.”

“Nah, this is smart. It’s an opportunity, plus you’re _way_ safer now that you’ve got her backing you, plus the three of me to look out for you. You’ll be fine.”

“Even if I am safe, which I honestly don’t buy, I can’t join a group that kidnaps people. They set me up in a store display window to be molested! I don’t know you that well, but I can’t believe Margo’s sister would be okay with that either. What are you doing with the Merchants?”

“Yeah, I’m not down with that shit. It’s taking things too far, and I’ll rein things back in when I’m in charge. Skidmark went about things in all the wrong ways.”

“So, you’ll what? Tell the Merchants to stop doing drugs and being criminals? How’s that supposed to work?”

“Psh. Hell no. I don’t got a problem with people doin’ drugs. And I sure ain’t gonna tell them what they can and can’t do to themselves. I’ll just crack down if they start messing up other people. No, what I mean is that Skidmark knew we needed more capes to keep from getting shat on by the government, or the other gangs. But he was an idiot for trying to set up trigger events. That’s what he was doing with all the kidnappings and death matches and fear factor shit. Didn’t stop to think that capes might not like the people who make them trigger. I’ve looked into this. Nobody has been able to manufacture trigger events without the new capes turning around and wiping them out. Look at you. You triggered and almost killed Phil, without even getting an offensive power.”

Charlotte shook her head. “No, it was Leviathan, for me. I just didn’t realize I had powers until that night, because I hadn’t been around any other capes.”

“Huh. Weird. Anyway, point still stands. See, without that oppression garbage that Adam thought was a good idea, the Merchants are pretty legit. But we still need more capes. So I figure we’ll provide a community where you can do what you like without the government breathing down your neck, making all the wrong shit illegal. That lets us recruit all the post-Endbringer triggers like you and Jazzhands.”

“Who?”

“Meh. PRT caught him the other night. He’s long gone. There’s others, but that bit wasn’t ever going to be enough on its own. That’s why I’ve been chasing down rumors of synthetic powers for months now, and I finally got results. I joined up with the Merchants ‘cause Adam had the resources to help me acquire that briefcase of power vials from the previous owners. I thought he did that because I’d convinced him it was a smarter alternative to what he was trying. But was he smart enough to grasp that concept? Of course not. He tested one on Phil, then decided to use the rest to reinforce his attempts to manufacture triggers. You saw the disaster that caused, with Faultline killing Squealer and making off with the vials.”

That all sounded crazy to Charlotte, but Faultline and Tattletale had taken the power vial thing seriously. They’d even claimed that the capes like Newter and Gregor were failed experiments by whoever was synthesizing powers. At least in comparison to that, reforming a violent gang sounded practically mundane.

“So, what’s the plan now?” Charlotte asked. “Now that there are three of you, you’re going to make the Merchants rebuild the city or something?”

“Of course not. Let them do what they want. I’ll just knock down the ones who get too egregious.”

“Like kidnapping people.”

“Sure,” Tabitha acceded. “The main thing will be to stop the intentional near-death experiences so we don’t end up with our faces melted by a new trigger.”

That was not promising, but baby steps. Maybe since she was Noelle’s liaison and Tabitha knew her, Charlotte could serve as a bit of a conscience, convince her to add a few more things to the list of “egregious” activities. Preventing other people from being abducted by a gang seemed worthwhile, and Tabitha didn’t make it sound like that had already been on her list of things to stop.

“What about the briefcase?”

“Written off. We can’t go after Faultline to retrieve it because of the Truce, which Alexandria will enforce while she’s in town. By the time the Nine are gone they’ll have moved it out of our reach. So we needed another solution. Hence, Echidna. Now we’ve got our alliance, we can get as many capes as we need either for ourselves or on loan from the Brood. It’s actually better because the new capes will be known factors that we can trust and who already know how to work with us. As soon as Alexandria and her government goons clear out, the city is as good as ours. We’ll kick out what’s left of the Empire and live how we want.”

“That sounds…utopian,” said Charlotte, reaching for a tactful word.

“Well duh, that’s what we’re aiming for. Or will be, anyway, once I’m directing things. The Undersiders had one thing right—declare a territory where _you_ make the rules. Where the politicians and corrupt police and the Nazi sympathizers can’t come and try to overrule you.”

“So, you’re what, an anarchist?”

“Exactly!” Tabitha gave her a wide grin. “People can govern themselves.”

“But didn’t you tell Noelle you were a capitalist? I thought anarchists were all about socialized communalism.”

“Sure, all the stupid ones are. Look at history. Capitalism works. You can’t have—”

“Hey, T!” interrupted the original Tabitha. She had to shout because they were over a block ahead by this point. “You still lecturing Charlotte back there?”

“Just explaining stuff. She’s young and sheltered and doesn’t get it.”

“She’ll figure it out. Come on and catch up! We’re almost there.”

Charlotte looked around. They were close to the university, just north of where Leviathan had created a lake in the middle of the city.

“What are we doing here? I thought we were heading back to your territory.”

“Just a little detour. We’re expanding the alliance.”

Charlotte pointed at the wolf silhouette tagged on a wall nearby. “With the Chosen? Are you insane?”

“Hah. As if! No, this hasn’t been their territory since the second week. We’re here for the doll chick.”

One of the other Whirlygigs bent down and flicked a finger near the ground. Charlotte hadn’t noticed the string there, but she definitely smelled the marinara sauce that flowed along it, connected to _something_ behind the apartment building. The thing surged around the corner and flung itself at the disturbed string. Fortunately, both the Whirlygigs standing there had backed up several steps, so they weren’t flattened by the panther made of black leather that pounced where they had been standing.

Charlotte and the Whirlygig she had been talking with stopped walking when it appeared, still a dozen paces back. With Eraser a similar distance to the other side, it almost looked like they had planned it.

A second mass of marinara lumbered toward them from inside a partially damaged building. When it emerged onto the street, Charlotte saw it was a ten foot tall gorilla formed out of blue fabric. It had a variety of textures—denim, corduroy, and fleece, at a glance—and was covered in muddy stains. Walking behind it came a short woman in a bedraggled dress, blond hair hanging in curls around a porcelain mask.

“Go away!” she shouted. “This area is under my protection. You may not enter!”

“We didn’t even try to enter your territory, Parian,” said the closest Whirlygig. “Just let you know we were here so we could talk. We wanted to negotiate.”

The gorilla moved forward to stand beside the panther. Charlotte would have expected it to knuckle walk, but it just tottered forward on two legs, arms stretched to the sides as if to catch anyone who might be foolish enough to run past it. Together the two cloth creatures blocked off the width of the street. Parian peered around the gorilla’s elbow.

“There’s nothing worth stealing here, but I’ll fight you if you try. Move along.”

“Dang, calm down. We aren’t trying to take anything.”

“Don’t lie to me. I know you’re Merchants. I’ve had to chase off four different groups of you this week.”

“And we respect that!” called the Whirlygig next to Charlotte. “We’re all about people running things themselves, being autonomous. The Merchants have new leadership, so we came to reach an understanding with you.”

“I’m not joining. I already told the Empire no, and the Protectorate. Now I’m telling you. So get out and don’t come…” Parian trailed off, looking at Charlotte. “You! Why are you here again? Did you bring these people?”

“What?”

“I told you last time. Capes aren’t welcome here. Leave now, or I’m going to attack.”

“Whoa, hold up!” said the first Whirlygig. “We just want to talk.”

“Not interested. You have five seconds.”

“Look, we’re making alliances with—”

“Four.” Parian’s voice was shaking.

The three Whirlygigs exchanged glances, and the one closest to Parian said, “We’ll come back a different—”

_Crack!­_

The light and sound made Charlotte jump. It’d been nearly ten minutes since Eraser’s power discharged, and she’d forgotten about him until he lost control again in a display of abysmal timing.

Parian took it as an attack, and both her constructs pounced forward. One Whirlygig was knocked to the ground, though the other dodged out of the way. Both engaged their powers, causing dust and pebbles to surge into motion around themselves. In seconds their telekinetic cyclone had picked up larger rocks and shards of glass, and everything was quickly accelerating.

“Wait, it was a mistake,” called Tabitha. She and Charlotte had already started to leave before Eraser’s loss of control.

Either Parian couldn’t hear her or she didn’t believe it, because Charlotte watched a dozen long ribbons unfurl from the hem of her dress. Some of them had needles glinting at their ends. The whole mess floated menacingly behind Parian while the gorilla held one Whirlygig down and the panther stalked toward the other.

Stones buffeted the gorilla trying to shove it away; a shard of glass lodged in the neck of the panther, but it couldn’t penetrate. Parian’s creations were stronger than the cloth they were made from. A ribbon lashed out at the girl on the ground, aiming to entangle her legs. It pushed most of the way into the cyclone before it started shaking in the two competing telekinetic fields.

The Whirlygig by Charlotte ran forward, letting her own range overlap with her fallen sister’s. The effect was immediate, much of the orbiting debris speeding up and altering course to circle both Whirlygigs in a complex pattern. The ribbon was shoved back towards Parian. The blue gorilla teetered, lost its balance, and was flung clear of Whirlygig’s cyclone. Whirlygig helped her other self up and together they walked backward toward Charlotte.

The panther, meanwhile, was herding Eraser and Whirlygig farther down the street in the other direction. The white glowing smoke leaking from Eraser’s eyes and mouth was thicker now, and every few steps Eraser’s power would crackle, bursts of raspberry scent popping into being.

“That wasn’t an attack!” shouted Whirlygig. “We’re just here to talk!”

“I don’t care!” answered Parian, but the panther stopped advancing. The gorilla was back at her side, the tangle of ribbons still hovering around her.

“We’ll leave,” said the Whirlygig by Eraser. “We’ll respect your borders. But if we’re going to be neighbors there are things we should talk about.”

“Just go.”

Charlotte followed the two nearest Whirlygigs as they carefully edged around the panther. It didn’t move to let them by, so they had to pass within a few feet of it. The smell of pasta sauce was enticing, reminding Charlotte of her empty stomach. It almost made her want to come back just to be near Parian or her constructs next time she ate. Then she glanced down and saw the sharpened knitting needles poking through the panther’s leather paws.

Parian watched them go, not seeming to relax her guard any of the times Charlotte looked back over her shoulder. The Tabithas complained to each other in low voices. Eraser didn’t say anything. He hadn’t spoken once yet, at least not in Charlotte’s hearing.

They barely made it a block before they heard the screams. Shouts of terror or pain, maybe both, starting distant but rapidly coming closer from up ahead.

“This way!” shouted Tabitha. She took off at a run for the closest intersection, her clones following right behind her. They hit the corner and turned left onto a side street. Charlotte struggled to keep up, but at least she wasn’t in the very back. A few seconds later Eraser passed Charlotte in a sprint, swiftly catching up to Tabitha in the lead. Okay, so she _was_ at the very back.

There was a crashing sound from the road they’d been on before, and Charlotte risked a look back. Nothing there that she could see. Facing front again she barely stopped herself from bowling over the others, who had all come to a stop. Up ahead of them, the entire road had suddenly been blocked off by a wall of ice that was still expanding and thickening as they watched. A flying woman in a fur-lined blue costume hurled a glittery fractal down at the far side of the wall, and immediately a cluster of huge spikes erupted along the top, possibly even covering the entire outer face of the wall.

Charlotte was in awe.

“That’s Rime!” she said. The best cape in the Protectorate was here. Here, in Brockton Bay! Getting to see her almost made up for the fact that Charlotte was once again in close proximity to a cape fight.

A sudden streak of honeysuckle overhead drew Charlotte’s attention. She looked up in time to see a cape in yellow and orange fly past at speed. A second later he had circled back and hovered above their group.

“Evacuate the area!” he shouted, loud enough to be heard by anyone who might be inside the buildings lining the street. “Slaughterhouse capes are headed this way!”

He didn’t wait for a response, just accelerated away. Charlotte heard his voice again from the direction they’d left Parian.

Charlotte caught Tabitha’s eye and cocked her head at the building beside them. Was it worth hiding instead of running?

Tabitha shook her head. “No, we’re too close. Run first, then hide.” The four Merchant capes spun around and started running back the way they had come.

Charlotte hesitated and looked at Rime’s barrier. Was it really a smart choice to move away from that kind of protection? Surely a forty-foot glacier would shield them more than an open street. Plus with Rime nearby, they’d have help from a powerful cape. She opened her mouth to call Whirlygig back and suggest they use the more defensible position, when a large silhouette moved behind the ice.

With no more warning than that, A long scythe-like arm speared through the wall, shattering it like plate glass. The arm itself was black and shaped like a mantis forelimb, but it shimmered red with heat or some other effect that caused the air to twist around it. A sideways swipe cleared more chunks of the former wall away, making a large enough hole for the owner of the arm to pull the rest of itself through.

Charlotte’s first thought was “Teeth.” So was her second. In fact, her brain seemed completely stuck on that one idea. Fangs as long as her arm were separated by a double row of dagger-like teeth. The yawning throat was covered in wicked barbs like palm-sized rosebush thorns. It took an effort to tear her attention away from its toothy maw.

Taking in the rest of the creature, Charlotte was unpleasantly reminded of that old movie _Alien_ that her aunt Ruth loved. It shared the same aesthetic, but where the xenomorph was a nightmare based on the human body plan, this creature was a killing machine based on a saber-tooth tiger. Most of it was covered in spiky black plates, and there were far too many eyes, both clustered on the head and running in rows along its body. Counting the mantis arms, it had five pairs of legs. Its low-slung head swung side to side on a too-long neck, and as it moved _more_ teeth unsheathed themselves, dripping with viscous slime.

An ice fractal struck, quickly encasing its head, and Charlotte shook herself free of the paralysis that had gripped her. She raced after Eraser and the others, who had already disappeared around the corner, and forced herself not to look back when she heard the ice crack or the thing let out a deep roar.

Reaching the next road, Charlotte looked one way and saw Parian atop her gorilla. The formerly empty street was now thronged with people, more streaming out of the apartments every second. She wouldn’t be able to escape quickly with that crowd in the way. In the other direction two buildings had been destroyed—presumably the crash that she heard earlier. One was toppled completely, filling the road. She couldn’t go that way.

“Charlotte!” Tabitha’s voice called.

She looked around until she spied Tabitha peering out through a metal door marked _Maintenance_. Charlotte sprinted the distance and ducked through the door into a cramped, dimly lit space. It looked like a ventilation and utilities hub for the building, complete with a large oil tank and outdated water heater. There was barely enough room for the five of them, and Charlotte eyed Eraser’s smoking hair uneasily.

“What did you see?” asked Tabitha.

“I think that was Crawler. He was about half the size of Noelle, and had ten legs, but he was terrifying to look at instead of comforting.” Two of the Tabithas nodded along, while the third gave her a weird look.

“Okay. We’ll have to stay here, then. Word from the heroes is that he met Echidna and has been fighting his clones ever since. I don’t know for sure how many of him there are, but there’s definitely more than one.”

“Right,” said another. “There’s no way to know if running away from one we can see is taking us to safety or toward a clone. Which sucks, but that gives me an idea for confronting Trainwreck later.”

Crawler roared somewhere outside, and Eraser’s power sparked. In a flash of white, a beachball size sphere of air was eaten by his raspberry scent.

“Careful, man,” soothed Tabitha, as all of them edged further away from him. “Keep it under control. You got this.”

Eraser nodded, visibly composing himself.

Charlotte pushed the door very slightly ajar and peeked through the gap. It was only a tiny slice of visibility, and she couldn’t see much. A handful of people ran past, gone as soon as she’d noticed them. More distant voices rose up—cries of alarm, frantic urgings to hurry or to hide. It was a chorus Charlotte knew all too well from the Empire offensives that had come near or to her neighborhood.

She couldn’t decipher much from the sounds, they were too muddled and distant. Then a scream nearby, a glimpse of three people running back towards Parian. The sound of feet, large ones, shaking the street. Irregular impacts getting closer and closer. Nothing came into view. Charlotte felt her anxiety ratchet up with each second of anticipation.

The stress was getting to Eraser, too. His power flashed three times in succession, hitting the floor, open air, then the water heater.

He winced at the noise and backed up against the far wall. This was a disastrous move, because there was suddenly another roar, loud and close, and the next flash of Eraser’s power bit into the corner of the room and destroyed something load-bearing. The ceiling sagged and groaned, and in his panic Eraser spawned a dozen bursts of his power back-to-back, even as he ran away along the wall. It was too much damage, and something gave. Masonry, insulation, and other things started to fall.

“Out! Out!”

Charlotte followed Tabitha’s instruction and raced out of the collapsing structure, one of the clones right on her heels. She could smell toffee and ammonia suffuse the area as the other two Whirlygigs spun up their power, catching falling debris out of the air. The damaged part of the building became a pair of swirling cyclones, tons of building material spinning around Whirlygig at what must have been well over a hundred miles per hour. More chunks of building were knocked loose by the cyclone, these new pieces becoming incorporated into the maelstrom. The passing debris whipped up a wind, which blew past Charlotte and almost knocked her off her feet.

“Oh, hell.”

Charlotte looked at Tabitha, then followed her gaze to where Crawler, presumably, was staring right at the twin tornadoes.

It wasn’t the same Crawler she’d seen before. This one shared the same xenomorph aesthetic, but was shaped more like an armadillo. Three prehensile tails lashed side to side, Crawler ignoring the blue gorilla grappling him to look over his shoulder. They seemed to have captured his full attention.

The gorilla heaved, somehow lifting Crawler most of the way off the ground despite being so much smaller. Crawler actually rolled his eyes, then struck like a snake to grasp the gorilla in his mouth. Crawler bit down, but amazingly the gorilla struggled against the force of the jaws, trying to pry them open. However, Crawler’s long tongue was wrapped around its shoulder, and the fabric where it touched was rapidly dissolving. As soon as a hole formed, the gorilla deflated and collapsed to the ground.

Crawler left it behind as he bounded towards them. Charlotte and Tabitha scrambled out of the way, and he slammed bodily into the closest of the two towering cyclones. The debris battered at him, knocking him away. It didn’t seem to do any damage, though. He lunged again, clawing at the items to knock them out of the air. It had some effect, clearing a view of Whirlygig at the center before he was pushed away again.

“You’re a power enhancer, right?” asked Tabitha urgently, dirt and small pebbles already kicking up into a dust devil. “Boost me! I need to help her.”

Charlotte grasped her hand and felt the toffee-and-ammonia scent intensify around her. The world shifted as the scent yanked her into motion, and Tabitha’s hand was pulled out of her grip. As soon as they lost contact Charlotte fell to the ground in an awkward, painful tumble.

“That’s worthless!” Tabitha exclaimed. “Why let me affect people if I can’t exclude _you_?” Charlotte had to agree. That was singularly counterproductive.

Meanwhile, the original Whirlygig had taken off at a run, launching items backward at Crawler with every step. It was like a giant shotgun loaded with bricks, nails, and plaster. Charlotte shrieked and pressed herself to the ground, trying to avoid any ricochets or mis-aimed items. That was unnecessary. Anything that approached the two of them was caught by Tabitha’s telekinesis and pulled into her orbit. Some items still bumped into Charlotte, but this cyclone was spinning far slower and nothing had enough force behind it to injure her.

For Crawler’s part, he ignored the retreating Whirlygig and her projectiles, remaining focused on the clone. Her tornado was gradually increasing in size as it picked up more pieces of the building and incorporated the bits hurled by her sister.

Crawler clawed another hole in the cyclone and spit a glob of something at her. Her telekinesis caught it, swirling it into the mass around her. As it spread out, the caustic liquid started eating the other debris away to nothing. Whirlygig worked to fill in the holes, but it was turning to useless slurry at an alarming rate. She started running, still at the center of her whirl of items, but she ran the opposite way, leading Crawler away from her original self and back towards Parian.

And towards Charlotte. She started running as well, trying to keep ahead of the deadly maelstrom. Eraser was ahead of her, still the faster runner. Tabitha didn’t follow them, instead ducking to the side and using her own telekinesis to make a safe path through the storm and follow after her original. Charlotte spared a thought to hope the girl wouldn’t get eaten or trampled or melted by Crawler, but focused on her own running.

A dozen yards later, Charlotte almost tripped over a mess of gray fabric that slithered out from a dark doorway. Only the marinara smell of Parian’s telekinesis warned her in time to jump over it and not lose her footing on the giant snake. The snake lunged, passing through the edge of the cyclone and wrapping around Crawler’s three tails. Its own tail was dug into the concrete, and it yanked Crawler to a halt. It started to constrict, somehow overpowering Crawler’s own impressive strength.

Then a barrage of pineapple scented grenades struck Crawler and encased him in an enormous prison of ice.

The ice immediately started to crack, large chunks shearing off despite Rime sending a continuous stream of fractals to reinforce it.

“Gigaton!” she called. “If you’re charged up, hit him now!”

The yellow and orange cape from before, Gigaton apparently, zipped through the air, visibly glowing. He came to a stop above Crawler but a careful distance from Rime. He was visibly glowing.

Charlotte had reached Parian now, and she stumbled to a stop, gasping for breath. A handful of families remained clustered around Parian, as if it was safer near a friendly cape than it would be to run away. Then again, the street was still clogged with other families trying to flee. Maybe they just couldn’t leave yet.

There was a whiff of toffee and ammonia as Whirlygig ran past. She had abandoned her remaining items and was picking up speed now that she could better see where she was going. She seemed to be trying to catch up with Eraser, who was having trouble moving quickly due to the crowd.

A flash of yellow light had Charlotte looking behind her. Gigaton was unleashing his power in the form of a coherent stream of light lancing down through the ice, vaporizing it into steam as it passed. The light didn’t strike Crawler or burn him. Instead, it poured into him, spreading along his silhouette and suffusing his body until it started to leak back out through his skin. He thrashed, spasmed, let out a roar that choked off into nothing.

Crawler collapsed to the ground, and Gigaton kept pouring his power into the fallen creature.

It didn’t matter. Whatever that light did, it wasn’t enough. Crawler twitched and pushed back up to his feet. His power effect was intense enough that Charlotte could smell it from where she stood, a rich lentil soup. He took a huge breath, and as he did a new growth formed on the back of his neck, puffing up into a pair of inflated sacs. Glowing veins lit up across his body, channeling Gigaton’s light into the sacs.

Crawler laughed, opening his maw wide. The sacs squeezed, and a cloud of yellow light billowed from his mouth to envelop his own tail. Parian’s cloth snake, which had somehow survived up to this point, disintegrated into nothing.

Gigaton lifted into the air, looking exhausted.

“What do we do?” asked a man nearby. Charlotte looked at him, realizing suddenly that only a minority of the people standing there were Caucasian. Maybe Parian really wasn’t an E88 sympathizer. Charlotte had been fairly certain from the choice of territory and the proud display of blonde hair, but judging by the solemn nod Parian shared with a girl who had a middle-eastern cast to her face, Charlotte must have misjudged the woman.

“Run west,” ordered Parian, her voice shaky. “Or hide inside. I don’t know. Just get away from here.”

The civilians moved to obey, Charlotte moving with them, and Parian brought up the rear while she sent her panther and messily repaired gorilla to try to buy time.

Crawler laughed, deep and amused.

Charlotte let some of the crowd pass her, drawing closer to Parian. She should offer to help, but she also didn’t want to disturb Parian’s focus, or maybe cause worse problems if her effect on Parian’s power backfired like with Whirlygig or Newter.

The panther leapt on Crawler’s back and bit down on the back of his neck. He tried to shake it loose, but it was latched on firmly enough that he only succeeded in whipping it around his head. That did let him catch its back legs in his mouth and bite down.

Unlike the gorilla, the leather panther didn’t dissolve in Crawler’s acid. It raked claws across his nearest eyes and thrashed its legs out to deliver a double strike against the back of his throat, forcing him to release the panther from his jaws. Meanwhile, the gorilla lumbered underneath Crawler. Its repaired arm was only half the length of the other, but it still managed to heave upward, tipping Crawler over onto his side.

In response Crawler compressed the yellow sacs, forcing the dregs of Gigaton’s energy out through his mouth. The hind leg of the panther caught fire, but it otherwise endured the onslaught and kept its grip on Crawler’s neck; the gorilla withered away to nothing.

Crawler gathered himself, preparing a new attack to dislodge the panther. Parian’s ribbons flurried around her, forming a net.

Before either could move, a tall apartment building just ahead suddenly toppled over onto the crowd of still-fleeing civilians. Charlotte saw Eraser’s power flash just before the structure covered him.

“Naima!” Parian’s shriek was one in a chorus of screams, most simply pain and fear, but Charlotte was close enough to the cape to hear her call that name.

There was no time to help the injured. Two massive creatures tumbled through the wreckage, snarling while they bit and clawed at each other. One of them was the sabertooth-like Crawler that Charlotte had seen initially. The other was even weirder, more a hybrid of squid and crocodile than anything recognizably mammalian. The rows of red eyes and the dripping jaw full of teeth were enough to identify it as another Crawler clone, though.

It was only when the two were flung away from each other that Charlotte saw the figure who had been sandwiched between the two—Alexandria.

Alexandria delivered a punch that caved in the front of Crocosquid’s snout. One long tentacle grabbed her around the waist, and in that brief moment Charlotte watched the snout grow back. Alexandria punched again, and this time an explosion erupted from his skin the instant she made contact, tossing her away hard enough that the tentacle ripped out of its body.

Then Sabertooth pounced, his shimmering mantis limbs finding purchase on the neck and back of the other Crawler. The first holes it made didn’t heal when the scythes were withdrawn, repositioned, and stabbed in again. The shimmer effect lingered behind and appeared to be negating the regeneration somehow.

Sabertooth twisted and dug those blades at least several feet into the flesh beneath the Crocosquid’s armored plates but struggled to get any further. The crocodile maw bit down around the other’s torso, keeping him from getting any more leverage.

Alexandria dropped like a hammer onto Sabertooth’s back, driving the shimmering mantis limbs entirely through Crocosquid’s body. He screamed and writhed, impaled as he was. Then Alexandria kicked it in the snout, eliciting the same explosion that had flung her away before. This time, it also tore Crocosquid’s body off of the transfixing limbs, leaving enormous gaping holes from which his insides tumbled out across the entire arc of his flight. With his adaptation and healing factor negated across so much of his body, Crocosquid died in seconds.

Parian let out another sound of grief, and Charlotte realized that the massive corpse had slammed into the back of the fleeing crowd, crushing a number of those who had escaped being flattened by the building collapse.

Charlotte felt conflicted. Were those lives the cost of victory? Would they have died anyway? She didn’t know if she could blame Alexandria for it. Rightfully those deaths were Crawler’s fault—all three of him—but it was hard not to second guess the heroine’s decisions. Had her attack been part of what knocked the apartment over in the first place?

A surge of lentil soup warned Charlotte just before the Armadillo Crawler bounded overhead to attack Sabertooth. Parian’s panther was still latched to his neck, but he didn’t seem impeded at all.

While the two remaining Crawlers renewed their brawl, Parian’s ribbons extended and lifted her over to the edge of the demolished apartment. The girl she’d nodded at earlier lay there, alive but bloodied and with a very obviously broken leg.

“Naima, where’s aunty?”

Naima coughed and said something in Arabic, to which Parian responded in the same language. Definitely not Empire.

In the ongoing fight, Alexandria slammed into Armadillo from the side, knocking him into the next apartment over. It shook with the impact, but didn’t fall. Yet.

“I have to stop this,” said Parian under her breath. Charlotte smelled marinara flow out, building up in scattered places underneath the collapsed building and around its edges. A _lot_ of it sank into Crocosquid’s body. Nothing visibly happened, but Parian was openly weeping now and the smell kept intensifying. Whatever this was, it was going to be big. Charlotte backed away as carefully as she could.

The rubble of the building started to shift, lifting and churning. Crocosquid’s body lurched, twisted. Then his skin peeled off the corpse in three large sections. The pieces floated through the air toward Parian, joined by more bloody scraps that forced their way out from under the ruins. These ones were human sized.

Parian removed her mask to vomit on the ground, even as she patched the fragments of skin together into an enormous shape. Charlotte felt like she might vomit too.

The thing Parian made was humanoid in the sense that it had two arms and two legs. There was none of the detail that had gone into the panther or gorilla, for which Charlotte was grateful. It was just unrecognizable strips of skin with the occasional face interspersed amid the other sections. Including one with Tabitha’s long hair hanging in front of it.

Now Charlotte did throw up.

Parian’s skin puppet strode forward, catching the attention of both Crawlers. They lunged at the new threat, and it caught one under each arm, falling forward to pin them against the ground. As much as they struggled, it was stronger and held them in place. Sabertooth stabbed his nullifying limbs into its chest, and a large gap opened up. The puppet deflated slightly, but Parian pumped more power into it to offset what was lost, and it maintained its grip on both of them.

Alexandria swooped down in front of them. Her scent was like the lingering odor in a microwave that has been used for fish. Charlotte hated that smell.

“This is your power?” Alexandria asked Parian. Her mask was still off, the blonde curls dangling from it. Tears ran down her cheeks, framed by bedraggled black hair.

Parian nodded. “I can’t do anything to them, just hold them in place. And I don’t know how long I can keep this up. Please, just get these people somewhere safe.”

Alexandria turned to Charlotte. “You are a Bouquet clone. Is your power the same or has it changed?”

“Uh… the same.” Charlotte was entirely blindsided by the idea that Alexandria would have recognized her.

“I’ll just bring Miss Militia, then. Parian, if you can hold them for five minutes, we have some weapons that were able to hurt the Siberian earlier today. I’m confident they’ll work on Crawler as well.”

“Okay. I’ll try.”

Alexandria launched herself into the sky, where she spoke briefly with Rime and Gigaton before streaking off toward the PRT building.

Not ten seconds later, the screeching sound of Eraser’s power heralded a shifting in the rubble. Several blasts of white vaporized chunks of the downed building, and Eraser dragged himself out onto the top of the debris pile. He looked battered and exhausted, but not badly injured.

Unfortunately, he emerged right beside the leg of Parian’s skin puppet, and an errant discharge of his power cut a gaping hole in its leg. The outflow of Parian’s telekinesis grew larger than she could compensate, and it started to slowly deflate.

“Eraser!” Charlotte called. “Get away from there!”

He lifted his head and saw the Crawlers. Panic took over his expression and he scrambled away, his power biting away at the air, the rubble, and the puppet’s other leg. The deflation accelerated, and both Crawlers started to wriggle free.

One flash of light took out a hemisphere of flesh from Armadillo’s flank. It didn’t immediately regenerate.

“Wait! Use your power on Crawler. Hit them before they get loose!”

Eraser understood and edged closer to Armadillo. Spheres of white discharged in rapid succession all around him. They weren’t aimed, but they didn’t have to be. Large chunks of Armadillo were obliterated just as Charlotte had hoped, and those chunks didn’t regenerate right away. The wounds were visibly filling in, but slowly, much like the wounds in Crocosquid from the shimmering scythes.

Eraser’s power was too slow, though, and Crawler’s regeneration was starting to speed up. Charlotte ran forward, scrambling to climb up the pile of rubble. She slipped, but managed to catch herself from falling on anything sharp.

“Stop for a second,” she said as she got close. “My power can help.” Eraser’s power cut off, and Charlotte closed those last few steps to touch his back. “Biggest one you can make,” she prompted.

Raspberries filled the air all around them, and in a blinding flash of white, the city disappeared. She saw empty grass fields stretching all around them before something like a heavy blanket fell on her.

She screamed and pushed it away. Only half of Parian’s skin puppet was here, and it didn’t have her power animating it anymore. Now it was just pieces of people.

It also wasn’t holding down Armadillo or Sabertooth anymore. Both Crawlers jumped to their feet and looked around, sniffing the air. Wherever the four of them were, it wasn’t Brockton Bay. The only thing that had come with them was a perfectly circular section of the collapsed building, and the shreds of skin from the puppet.

Eraser’s power didn’t obliterate things, it sent them somewhere.

Armadillo and Sabertooth seemed to have grasped the situation as well, their gazes locking on Eraser.

“Do it again? A bit smaller this time?” Charlotte said in a rush.

Just as both Crawlers lunged, a significantly smaller ball of raspberries enveloped her and Eraser. Charlotte found herself falling to the ground from the height of the rubble she’d climbed. She landed badly, jarring her knees and skinning her palms and forearms on rough stone. A chunk of Armadillo’s snout landed beside her with a splat; a foot and a half of shimmering scythe buried itself in the ground not far from her head, the distortion around it slowly fading.

Slowly, painfully, Charlotte pushed herself to her feet. She was standing in an empty plain of rock, with some trees visible in the distance. A wide bay lay before her, and a familiarly shaped hill stood a little ways inland.

“Oh, dear.”

Eraser had tumbled a short distance away. He sat up and looked at her when she spoke.

“I think we _are_ still in Brockton Bay. Just not ours.”

Eraser looked around, taking in the landmarks. His power flashed, and a small sphere of rock vanished, replaced by grass. It still had clippings in it from being mown.

“Oh, wow. Um, do you think you can aim us? Get us back home?”

Eraser screwed up his face in concentration, and spheres of destruction peppered the air and stone around him. Some displacements weren’t noticeable. Others left brick or asphalt behind.

Looking up to meet her eyes, he shook his head. That wasn’t good.

So, no way to get back to Bet, at least not immediately. That would have to be a later plan. For now, she needed to focus on some simpler goals. They had no food, no shelter.

“I think we should try to at least find an Earth with people on it. I’d rather not sleep outside and hunt my own food. Do you think you can transfer us again? Maybe a few more times until we get back to civilization?”

Eraser took a moment to collect himself, then nodded. Charlotte limped over and lay a hand on his shoulder. The world around her vanished in a flash of white and raspberries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to my beta readers, especially Juff, for helping to improve this chapter. As mentioned in the previous informational post, I have another writing deadline that is taking precedence over Augment for a while, but I’ll keep working on chapters as I can. I’ll at least try to get the next one out to bring the perspective back to our original Charlotte and wrap up the arc.
> 
> If you haven’t read Ward, yes this is the canon “true use” of Parian’s power that Wildbow teased for years as being capable of handling Behemoth.
> 
> On Tabitha: I generally try to let characters present good cases for their philosophies, which occasionally requires some time and research to do their perspective justice. I have not done that for Tabitha’s ideology here. Some of that is because she hasn’t actually done any deep thinking about it herself. She’s mostly making it up as she goes, substituting conviction and contrarianism for a cohesive structure. On the other hand, some of it is because I simply didn’t put in the effort. Apologies to anyone who feels I’ve made strawman arguments out of their political views.


	46. Tumble 5.8

The debriefing was difficult. Charlotte had to recount her part of the fight against the Siberian, then listen to others talk about it, then revisit it again when someone had questions. There were a lot of questions, especially about how she’d come to the conclusion that the Siberian was a projection, and each question called up a blood-tinged memory of someone who’d been injured or killed.

“Casualty” was such a clean sounding word, a way to elide the hole gouged in that girl’s spine and the meaty pulp that was all that remained of the agent crushed under an invulnerable power pole.

Miss Militia helped, doing much of the talking. She’d been right next to Charlotte the whole time, after all. But they wanted to hear Charlotte’s perspective as well. Multiple times, and in detail.

The embarrassment of talking about her power was almost a welcome distraction from remembering the fight itself. Because of course they weren’t satisfied to let her say, “The Siberian’s power didn’t react to mine when she touched me.” No, they had to make her describe it specifically and go step-by-step through her reasoning, which made Charlotte feel like an idiot retelling a story they’d heard from a three-year-old.

_The Siberian smelled like a chicken coop, but the smell didn’t get worse when she almost strangled me, just like in my dream last night when another version of me touched Crusader’s ghost and his baby-powder smell didn’t spread out. I didn’t realize the connection until I saw Alexandria, who looked sorta like him._

There’s really not much dignity to be salvaged after giving a report like that. God, how did any of them keep a straight face listening to her blather such nonsense?

For better or worse, the meeting was interrupted partway through when Miss Militia got called away by Alexandria. Something about Crawler, yet another unstoppable monster rampaging through the city. They didn’t ask for Charlotte, thank God.

The new crisis meant that nearly everyone else suddenly had tasks to do, and Charlotte was left adrift. She trailed out of the room after the others and found that Miss Cochrane was waiting for her in the hall.

“Hello, Bouquet. Your mother asked to see you when you’re ready. I can take you there, to your room, or to the showers, whichever you prefer.”

“My mom’s room, please. I think I’d rather have some company right now.”

“One moment, Bouquet,” interjected Tangle before Miss Cochrane could lead her off. Charlotte startled a little—she’d known he was there, of course, from his formaldehyde aura, but she hadn’t expected to be spoken to.

“Yes?”

“I just want to say, good work. You did well, both out there and in here. I know it’s hard.”

“I… thanks.” Charlotte glanced at Miss Cochrane. She was standing patiently and didn’t seem to be in a hurry, so Charlotte turned back to Tangle. “Does it get easier?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Probably, but I’m the wrong person to ask. I’ve almost never been involved in cape fights, and I only go to a couple of meetings like this a year, when the PRT request my help. I always hate them.”

“Oh. You aren’t in the Protectorate?”

“No, I’m independent. I consult for WEDGDG sometimes, or help out when the heroes decide they need someone like me. Being here, for example.”

“Everyone says being independent is dangerous.”

“It absolutely is. I’ve got an arrangement with two friends, both Thinkers. We watch each other’s backs, cover each other’s blind spots. It’s worked out so far, but we’ve had a few close calls, and have needed to request Protectorate assistance on occasion. I can’t say I recommend trying what I’ve done.”

“I couldn’t anyway. I’m only worth anything when I’m with other capes.”

Tangle stepped closer. “Stop. You are more than your power—don’t let it define your worth to yourself or to the team you join. Parahumans are still human first and foremost. If you focus only on your utility, you’re ignoring the part of you that is human and that can actually have relationships with your teammates. Any team you join is recruiting _you_ , not your power. Don’t let them forget it.”

Her expression must have betrayed her skepticism, because he asked, “What, don’t believe me?”

“The first people who saw what my power could do panicked at the thought of me being used against them, which immediately led to a preemptive, coordinated attack on their enemy—an enemy they were convinced would kidnap me for my power. I’m not sure they were wrong, and I’m pretty sure the only reason those same capes didn’t force me to join them outright was because of the second team of villains that also knew about me. None of that has anything to do with who I am as a person.”

“Villains are like that,” he said.

“Oh, so the Protectorate deployed me against the Siberian because of my winning personality? No. It’s my power that matters here, not me.”

Tangle bobbed his head side to side. “Sort of. Yes, powers matter a lot, but the personalities matter too. The human side of things is why I’m not with WEDGDG anymore, and it’s the human side of things that has kept me and my two friends together, not just our capabilities. What I’m trying to say is that if you allow yourself to be treated as just a vehicle for your power that you will be miserable. Don’t devalue the rest of who you are just because you’ve got a superpower now. And however it may seem, I can promise that others here do care for you as a person. There’s orange and yellow threads between you and Miss Militia, and yellow and green ones to the young agent here.” He gestured at Miss Cochrane.

Charlotte groaned. “What does that even mean?”

“Put simply, it means they like you.”

“Why not just say that? Why did I have to report the sensations from my power rather than just what it told me? I sounded like un utter moron.”

Tangle chuckled. “Yeah, I know that feeling. According to the Protectorate that’s a good thing. It’s better to have their Thinkers come across to the public as quirky and useless than as all-knowing schemers. Plus being able to report Financier’s premonition as ‘orange denim’ is far less likely to incite panic than if they shared the context-relevant conclusion that ‘The Elite are likely to crash the stock market this week.’”

“It’s all about image, then?”

“No, that’s just a side effect they’ve decided to run with. The real reason behind it is that Thinkers benefit from each other’s insights in a sort of feedback loop. We tested things like that frequently back when I was part of WEDGDG, and the results almost always showed that the synergy works best when information shared is as raw and unfiltered as possible. Anything else risks jumping to inaccurate conclusions. I’ll forward the transcript from this meeting tonight, and I guarantee that at least one person’s power will hook into the chicken coop description rather than anything else you said. So, I guess what I’m saying is that some people—usually your boss—will want a simple answer of what you figured out, but you should get used to sounding crazy when you work with Thinkers.”

“Great.”

Tangle waved his notepad. “I should go take care of that report now. I’ll be here for a few more days, at least, so don’t hesitate to reach out if you have more questions. I can offer advice about corporate or independent teams, or working with WEDGDG. I’m happy to help you however I can.”

“Thanks,” Charlotte said, then turned away and nodded at Miss Cochrane, who led the way to a stairwell and started climbing.

They stopped two landings up, Miss Cochrane leaning against the metal railing and staring down the shaft toward the ground floor. “You know, he’s not entirely wrong,” she said.

“About not losing myself to the mask? I don’t think there’s any way to escape this cape thing.”

“Well, that too, I guess. I meant more about not being down on yourself for having a support power. There’s no shame in being part of a team. I’ve gathered that your family is Jewish, so you already know the value of community, especially in this city.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Speaking as someone involved in cape stuff without powers of my own, I can tell you that everyone benefits from a team. You more than most, maybe, with the power you have, but that same power means that your team will in turn benefit more from having you. One thing I truly love about the PRT is that we rely on each other. It’s never just the director’s show or the field commander’s. Everyone has something that they contribute, and we support each other. People tend to focus on the Parahuman Response part of our mandate, because that’s unique and interesting. They forget that the reason we succeed at all is the T. We’re a Team.”

Charlotte was a little taken aback by the passion in Miss Cochrane’s voice. The woman pushed upright and looked at Charlotte. “Deriving worth from what you bring to your team is hardly a bad thing, and defining yourself by the roles you take on is only a problem if you don’t care about the people you’re working with or the goal you share. So, you say you’re only useful when you work with other capes? That’s fine. I say embrace that, because it’s a head start on becoming a part of your new community.”

“Huh. I hadn’t considered that perspective.” Charlotte wasn’t sure how much she agreed, but it did make more sense to her than Tangle’s approach. “Thanks. I’ll think about that.”

Miss Cochrane smiled, then led her up one more flight of stairs, opening the door into a generic hallway.

“Also, don’t think I didn’t notice Tangle’s hints about corporate and independent teams. Sure, consider all your options, but in your shoes I’d want the best support and protection I could get. Without question that’s the team that has PRT backing, government funding, and a nationwide network of capes—including the Triumvirate—who can both help you and benefit from your powers.”

With that, she rapped on a nondescript door, which opened a moment later to reveal Blueberry on the other side. Or rather, Charlemagne, as she’d asked to be called. Seeing the horridly obese version of herself was still disconcerting, and Charlotte tried not to shudder.

“Shabbat Shalom,” said Charlemagne, stepping aside so Charlotte could see her mother and a group of clones sitting around a long table in a medium-sized conference room.

“Shabbat Shalom, Charlotte,” called her mother. “Come in, come in. We lit a candle for you already, since you were still busy.”

Charlotte stepped inside hesitantly, feeling crowded by Charlemagne’s bulk and more than a little out of place.

“Shabbat Shalom. I guess I lost track of the days.”

“I’ll come check on you in an hour, okay?” interjected Miss Cochrane, before setting off back toward the stairs.

Charlotte took a deep breath as the door closed behind her. She could do this. She’d already decided to give her clones a chance, this was just the first step on that path. She walked to the spot that had been apparently left for her. It was between two clones, rather than next to her mom, which stung more than she wanted to admit.

While Charlemagne situated herself on a bench at the end of the table, Charlotte took in the room. In addition to her mother, herself, and the four clones, a pair of PRT agents sat in chairs at the far end of the room having a hushed conversation. Everyone seemed to be ignoring them, so Charlotte did too.

Only one of the clones looked normal. Charlotte couldn’t decide if that identical appearance was better or worse than the warped bodies of the others. Nor something she really wanted to focus on now, anyway. There was a half-eaten loaf of challah on the table along with a pack of canned soda, and a small tea light was burning in front of each place.

“Where’s Zaydee?” she asked.

Laura scowled. “He has decided not to join us tonight.”

The clone across the table from Charlotte shifted, drawing her attention. She had dark lumpy scars on her face and neck, and her eyes were not quite the same height as each other. “I went to invite him,” she said in a small voice. “He told me Shabbat was for family.”

“Oh.”

The clone looked up and met Charlotte’s eyes. “He wanted you to know that he’d be waiting for you in his room.”

Everyone was looking at her, waiting for a response. Charlotte didn’t know what to feel. She was still offended that her mom had only talked to her twice since arriving at the PRT building, and it hurt to think she was being replaced. If she’d faced this choice yesterday, she might have decided to welcome Shabbat with her grandfather, avoided the crippling awkwardness of trying to face these copies of herself. But she could hear that exact hurt in the clone’s voice, the fear of being disowned. It was all too easy to imagine their situations reversed, and Charlotte wanted no part in making that pain any worse.

More than that, she’d dreamed these girls’ memories. She’d felt how similar they were to her, and she couldn’t bring herself to reject them no matter how much easier that might be.

“I’ll go talk to him later,” she said.

The tension around their table lessened.

“So, how did the mission go?” asked Charlemagne. “We were worried about you.”

“Miss Militia seemed to think it went well. We learned some things that will help next time, but people got hurt and died. I’d rather talk about something else.”

“Of course,” said Laura. “Just know that I’m proud of you. One agent came by to tell me you’d come back safely, and she said you were a huge help.”

“Thanks, Mom. Could we maybe start by reminding me what to call each of you? I only remember Charlemagne’s nickname.”

“I’m Sharpei,” said the clone to Charlotte’s left, handing her a piece of challah. Her face was twisted and she had splotchy lupus-like discolorations on her skin.

“And I’m going by Chardonnay,” said the one on her other side. She was the one Charlotte had called Mirror before, her identical twin.

That left the one across from her, with the keloid-like scarring. “Chartreuse. Don’t worry, we’re still trying to get used to them ourselves. It won’t offend us if you forget or get them wrong.”

“I know I’m not you,” said Chardonnay, “but I still think of myself as Charlotte. These nicknames feel more like cape disguises than anything else.” The others all nodded.

“Don’t forget about the one who couldn’t come,” added Laura. “Your sisters have started calling her Charlatan, which I think is mean. You should help them come up with something better.”

“She tried to kill you, Mom,” said Sharpei. “I think she deserves it.”

“Let’s not have this argument again,” cut in Chardonnay.

“Fine,” said Sharpei. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Well, are we ready to talk about our cape careers? We were planning to join the Wards here in Brockton Bay, but there’s no city that is going to need five power manipulators. Yes, I know our powers are different, but we’re all still Trumps that affect other capes.”

“That’s a good point,” said Charlemagne. “Will we even have the option to stay together? And do we want to? I’d be happier with that, but I know we’re not all the same. Maybe someone wants to strike out on their own.”

“No, we need to stick together. That’s what family is for,” said Laura. Charlotte found herself glancing at Chartreuse and sharing an eyeroll, which was a supremely weird experience.

“We’ll need to find out what options we have before we can really talk about this,” said Chardonnay diplomatically. “Why don’t you tell us what you’re going to do, Mom? There’s a lot of work for a glazier in a city that Shatterbird has visited.”

“There is, isn’t there,” agreed Laura. “There was already a lot of demand just from the Endbringer damage. Now there will be more work than any of us contractors can get done in a year. Big reconstruction firms will probably come in and take the bulk of orders, but that’s not a problem. I might try to hire on and train new workers on how to handle glass or do an install job. On the other hand, one of the Assistant Director’s people was talking to me about support for families of Wards, and they floated the idea of masking that by contracting me to do windows and glasswork for the PRT. That might make the most sense, with six of you becoming heroes.”

“Charlatan isn’t going to be a hero, Mom.”

“Stop it, Sharpei,” said Charlemagne. “Besides, we don’t know how many more of us might make our way to the PRT.”

“How many more of you, of _us_ , are there?” Charlotte asked. “Talking about the dreams didn’t help much in figuring that out.” She shuddered, remembering the ones that had ended in her death.

Charlemagne shrugged. “A dozen, maybe?”

Chardonnay nodded. “I think that’s close. About half of those are with Mother, the other half spread around the city. So, fifteen to twenty of us total.”

Charlotte’s stomach dropped. She had convinced herself she was ready to accept four new sisters, maybe five if her mom insisted on caring for Charlatan. She wasn’t anywhere close to ready to being so utterly redundant. That was practically an entire classroom full of replacement Charlottes.

Laura wrinkled her nose. “I wish you would stop referring to that Echidna cape as Mother. It makes me feel unwanted.”

 _Yes, mom,_ Charlotte thought, _I know how you feel._

“She is our Mother, though,” said Charlemagne. “She brought us into this world in an act of creation just as wonderful as any mother in Israel. It may have been gross with us coming out naked and covered in fluids, but… well, that’s actually just like a regular birth too. The only difference is we got a head start by having Charlotte’s memories. So yes, you raised us, you’re our Mom. But in a very real, physical sense Noelle is our Mother. And we love her for it.”

“Actually,” said Sharpei, ignoring Laura’s pinched expression, “I’ve been thinking about that. Are we still Jewish? Noelle’s not—I asked. So if we’re going by matrilineal descent, which birth counts? Will we need a conversion ceremony?”

“Huh. I guess we can ask Rabbi Fisk. I wouldn’t think so? But maybe there’s already rabbinical precedent for clones. It might have come up before, with all the weirdness that happens around capes.”

Charlotte cleared her throat. “In case one of you talks to him first, and I’m not there, can you ask about our soul? Souls? I want to think we’re all our own people, but with dreaming your memories, I’m not so sure. And… I’m worried. There’s some of us out there I _really_ don’t want to share a soul with.”

Nods all around, with an especially emphatic one from Chartreuse. She’d been in Zaydee’s apartment when _that_ clone had used Othala’s power to burn it down. The idea that any version of her would have joined the Empire still left a yawning pit in Charlotte’s heart.

“So,” said Chardonnay after a moment, “in the interest of changing the subject, does everyone feel healthy? Someone sneezed near me in the cafeteria today, and it made me wonder if our immune systems got cloned along with everything else. Are we going to get chicken pox again? Or need repeat vaccinations? I really don’t want to end up with head colds for a year because I have the disease resistance of a newborn.”

The conversation moved on from there, and Charlotte managed to relax and even enjoy it a little. It didn’t feel like family yet, but it was close. Close enough that she could imagine them becoming a real family eventually.

She tried to hold onto that feeling when she left with Miss Cochrane after an hour and a half, tried to ignore the deep relief she felt when the ammonia scents faded away and she was no longer surrounded by the reminder of Noelle’s power and the nightmares that had come when she was entombed in the monster’s belly. She tried to forget the love and loyalty in Charlemagne’s voice when she’d talked about her Mother.

There were good things there, and she could see herself in each of the clones she’d sat with this night, but there were some deeply uncomfortable aspects to it as well.

“Where to?” asked Miss Cochrane.

“I should go see my grandfather before it gets too late. What time is it, anyway?”

“Just after ten.”

“No wonder I feel so tired.” As if the hour had anything to do with it.

“How long would you like to spend with your grandfather?” Miss Cochrane asked. “I can come get you at any time.”

Charlotte appreciated the offer, and she really did want to get a shower and go to bed, even if there were not-dreams waiting for her.

“Maybe twenty minutes? I think I have the energy for that.”

“That will be fine.” She gave Charlotte a kind smile, then opened the door out of the stairwell.

Zaydee was standing in the hallway watching for her.

“Charlotte! Shabbat Shalom. That was a long meeting you were in.”

“Shabbat Shalom, Zaydee. Yes, I’ve had a lot of meetings tonight.” Charlotte entered the room he’d been given and took a breath to firm her resolution while he closed the door. She wouldn’t help her grandfather widen that schism or let him use her to make a point. “But meetings didn’t take up the whole time. I also spent some time with Mom.”

His mustache twitched. “That girl. Sometimes I don’t know what my boy saw in her. Don’t let her put any strange ideas in your head about having to share us. You’re still my best and only granddaughter.”

“I appreciate that, Zaydee, but I was talking to the other Chars and—”

“Apupup!” He interrupted. “They are not you. You are the only you. Oy vey, it is like these PRT people have never heard of Strangers before. No wonder our city is in such a state, if the cape experts can’t see something so obvious.”

Charlotte saw the chance to change the subject and took it.

“Actually, Zaydee, I wanted to ask your advice about that. As far as I can tell, joining the Wards is my best option, but you’ve had a lot to say over the years about the Protectorate’s inadequacies. Do you think I’m making a mistake?”

He was silent for a long minute before replying. “No. You don’t have many good choices, so you just need to make the most of it. You’re a parahuman now, and on your way to being a big shot if what I heard about you fighting the Siberian is true. The Protectorate is your best choice.”

Then, predictably, he started singing.

“Save tomorrow for tomorrow / Think about today instead / I could give you facts and figures / Even give you plans and forecasts / Even tell you—"

“Stop, Zaydee. Stop!” Charlotte buried her face in her hands. “You’re the only person I know who unironically likes _Jesus Christ: Superstar_.”

“But the next verse is even more relevant.”

“No, I promise I get it: make the plans I can with the constraints I’m given, don’t borrow trouble. Please stop singing.”

“Well, that’s good, because I have another song I want you to think about.” And he started to hum.

Charlotte froze, recognizing “Lonely Canary” from _Charlotte Sweet_. It wasn’t a well-known musical, but with her name in the title it had become a mainstay of Zaydee’s repertoire. It was a hilarious comedy, telling the story of a talented soprano recruited into a circus to show off her voice. Given the obvious connection Zaydee was implying, the humor disappeared.

Charlotte joined in, humming along and thinking of the lyrics to “Lonely Canary,” the point in the story where the fictional Charlotte realized that her employers had become her captors. She’d lost her family, her voice, and her freedom, and she was trapped for good. In the story, her employers addicted her to helium, using it to keep her voice high even when injured by too much singing. That was ridiculously nonsensical, but having seen Dinah Alcott rescued from something disturbingly similar, it didn’t feel as far-fetched.

Zaydee stopped after the first chorus, and they sat in silence for a few minutes.

“This probably isn’t the place to talk about that, but you never know if your boss is going to actually turn out to be Barnaby Bugaboo. Don’t make the mistakes Charlotte did. Don’t let them separate you from your family. Because I’m getting a little too old to pull off a final-curtain rescue.”

His tone was light, but the fact that he felt the need to warn her in such a covert way, with references that wouldn’t be understood even if they were overheard, was what scared Charlotte the most. She truly didn’t think there was an evil conspiracy at the heart of the PRT—it wasn’t possible to keep something that big a secret from so many people, after all—but she’d keep her eyes open, and she’d be careful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That’s a wrap for Arc 5. And look at that! I managed to end it with a chapter about a wholesome family dinner, and not even one cape fight.
> 
> Charlotte Sweet came out in 1980, shortly before Scion’s arrival. The entire show is utterly absurd, but the plot elements are far too relevant to this story to ignore. Sadly, Canary herself is already in the Birdcage and is supremely unlikely to have sung “Lonely Canary” given how obscure its source is.
> 
> Happy New Year, by the way. Updates will remain slow for the time being, but don’t worry! Excitement awaits!


	47. Terror 6.1

Barbed wire entangled Elle’s legs, binding her to a wooden stool only barely high enough off the ground to be a seat rather than a footrest. White padded walls pressed in around her, their fabric ripped and worn and even tearing away in a few places where the hidden metal spikes poked through.

The barbs and spikes didn’t hurt her, didn’t cut into her skin; nothing in her worlds ever injured her. But that didn’t stop them from binding her in place or digging uncomfortably into her muscles and joints. She hugged her chest, and the threads of her shirt unraveled, snaking around her arms and sealing them in.

Distantly, she could hear Gregor talking to Faultline. It was hard to pay attention to his words, and she didn’t try very hard.

“… accept the contract?”

“No.” That was Melanie’s voice. Elle could see her through the rough bars set in the cell door’s tiny window. As she watched the bars splintered, forming a bladed latticework before the holes filled in, sealing her away.

Something brushed her side—two rods growing up from the stool’s seat, worming their way under her shirt and pressing against her skin, holding her immobile. She was trapped, couldn’t escape, no way out. Mimi would find her.

Mimi. Elle had been trying her best not to think about Mimi, to contain her thoughts. Even if she was stuck in the Bad Place, there were parts of it that could be tolerated. She’d done so for years, after all.

But Mimi wasn’t in those parts.

In an instant the padded walls went up in flames, smoke pooling on the ceiling before dropping in twisting spirals to the floor where it writhed and eddied into contorted faces, their mouths open in silent screams.

Elle tried to force the Bad Place away. She needed to anchor herself to reality, haul herself into the world. She focused, trying to see where she really was.

Slowly, far too slowly, the open drain and chipped concrete of her cell started to overlay onto the worn tile floor. She moved toward reality, and the Bad Place came with her. She could feel the cell adapting its shape to the room she was in, up on the second story of one of the other businesses Faultline owned. Beyond and between the crackling flames, Elle could hear the others talking.

“… do we do?” Emily’s voice. She sounded scared. Scared like Elle was.

Rather than answer, Melanie snatched up a silver case and the papers it contained, raising them into the air. She looked at Elle. The door between them was gone now, and the table Melanie stood at had merged with a bloody operation table.

“Are you with us, Elle?” asked Melanie.

Elle was, she was here, but the Bad Place was here too. Chains clanked, and the whining of a saw sounded in the distance.

“… hear me?” asked Gregor, suddenly at her side. The wire around her legs split, stretched, pushing him away. “Stay with us, Elle.”

Elle couldn’t do it. It didn’t matter if she stayed here, because the Bad Place was following her. She couldn’t escape. Staying here meant forcing that place on the others, and she didn’t want to do that. True, she could anchor them to reality, evict them from her worlds, but that took focus and energy--focus she needed to keep herself grounded or to control what came through.

Elle let go, allowed herself to come unmoored. She entered the other world fully and pulled it away from Earth Bet. stopped reaching for reality, letting the tile floor fade to nothing. Her friends’ words dissolved into an unintelligible echo. She heard the sounds, but the meanings didn’t reach her.

_Should we take her somewhere else?_

_No. She stays lost for longer when she moves around. We’ll keep her here for today and try to help her regain some lucidity by tonight. Shamrock and Newter will go out to prepare what we need to leave the city._

She’d escaped the asylum once, with Melanie’s help, but the Bad Place had come with her. Melanie had helped her build new worlds, like the high temple with its beautiful columns and shifting maze or the lonely meadow filled with grass and only the occasional hidden pitfall. Both of those had open skies, and Elle yearned for that freedom.

She reached out to find those worlds, strained for them, but they were beyond her grasp. Inaccessible, almost as if they never existed.

_Yes, leave the city. We have no contract tying us here, and I have no intention to throw you against Bonesaw or the Siberian. There’s nothing we bring to the table that Alexandria’s quick response task force doesn’t already have access to._

The straightjacket tightened around her arms, the faces whorled nearer and nearer through the smoke.

She thought she heard Mimi’s laugh in the pops of flame, first far, then close, then somewhere else entirely.

No. Elle would not stay here, she would not be trapped! Mimi had brought back the Bad Place, but she wasn’t here now.

And yet everywhere nice, all of the beautiful worlds Melanie had helped her make, were far beyond her reach. The crumbling roads, the glistening church, even the burning tower--there was no path to them from this cell.

_We’ll be heading to Philadelphia to follow up on a lead from this paperwork. There’s just one more task that needs to happen before we leave. While Newter and Shamrock arrange the vehicles, I’m going to see if I can find any of the Travelers. They know something about all this._

She thought back to when she’d escaped the Bad Place before. It had taken a year and a half before she’d first found the high temple. Before that she’d had to wade through the bloody marsh, drift over the empty abyss. They were awful places, but every one of them was better than the Bad Place. She didn’t need the peace of the lonely meadow, she just needed to be somewhere, anywhere else.

She reached again, trying to connect to another world. She came closest with the claustrophobic tunnels of the shadow warren, but the Bad Place had too strong of a grip on her, the flames barring her way.

_I know some of you noticed the division in how Bouquet reacted to us and to the Undersiders. It wasn’t just discomfort around Newter and Gregor—she avoided Shamrock too. Tattletale was cagey about it, but she seemed to confirm that Bouquet’s power was identifying capes with manufactured powers. Cauldron powers. Most of you weren’t there, but at the Truce meeting she shied away from every one of the Travelers._

Wait, flames. Because of Mimi. The fire was trapping her, but she could take the fire with her. Not to the burning tower, it was too open. But there was another place.

Elle concentrated on the burning walls, the drifting smoke. She let the heat intensify, melting the metal barbs in the wall. Space seemed to fold back, and instead of the padded cell Elle found herself on the edge of a smoldering caldera. Before her a lake of molten rock bubbled and spat. Beneath her feet and stretching up the rugged cliffs at her back, obsidian daggers shifted as they scraped against one another like gnashing teeth. An immense stalagmite plunged into the pool, splashing lava into the air. Some of it crashed over her feet, solidifying and locking her in place

Elle smiled. Sulfur clogged the air and filled her lungs, but she welcomed it. She was one enormous step away from the Bad Place, and she thought she knew how to take another. She’d make her way back eventually, and she would leave the Bad Place far behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Arc 6. These chapters will be shorter than usual as we hop between disparate perspectives.
> 
> I am sad to say that while we will see more of Faultline’s Crew, they aren’t getting nearly as much focus in this story as I had initially planned. If you want a wonderful Faultline fic (including vastly superior Labyrinth chapters), I highly recommend the recently completed Ghost in the Flesh (https://archiveofourown.org/works/22835158/). The characterization there is top notch.


	48. Terror 6.2

Charlotte was simultaneously embarrassed by her mom and impressed with her. They’d had a morning meeting with someone from the director’s staff to formalize Charlotte’s membership with the Wards, and her mother had spent the first five minutes hemming and hawing about whether they should be discussing an employment contract on shabbat, while at the same time haggling over details of money and housing and who knew what else. That was the embarrassing part.

The impressive bit came after everything had been signed and filed, when she started ranting loudly about the PRT’s refusal to provide forms for Charlotte’s clones.

“What do you mean, I’m not their guardian? I’m their mother!”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but we aren’t the courts. Regardless of how good your case is, we can’t grant custody. Current law regarding spontaneously appearing powered individuals such as clones or Case 53s defaults to wardship under the PRT. Until you are able to arrange a court appearance, we can’t consult you in the decision making process.”

There was a lot of shouting, especially when the staffer slipped up and admitted that the clones might be relocated to other cities without Laura’s input or consent.

Fortunately, Charlotte had already conveyed Zaydee’s warning from the night before. When an attempt was made to discuss Wards membership privately with each of the clones, Charlotte hummed the “Lonely Canary” reprise under her breath and they all refused. Wieldmaiden, who had been present as a guard or escort of some kind, seemed to interpret Charlotte’s humming as boredom with the discussion and invited her to go meet the other Wards now that she was officially a member. It didn’t seem like anything would be resolved soon, and she wasn’t actually contributing to the discussion, so Charlotte accepted. She felt confident that her clones would be cautious and not let themselves be isolated or manipulated too obviously.

Stepping out into the hall, Charlotte found Kid Win was already waiting there to escort her down to the Wards quarters. He and his tech had a pleasant creamed corn scent to them, a vast improvement over Wieldmaiden’s shower mold.

Kid Win led her to a large elevator that surprised Charlotte for having a faint smell of its own. It wasn’t one she could identify, almost as though four or five different scents were blending together. Looking around, she tried to identify a source.

“Something wrong?” asked Kid Win as the doors closed.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “Do you have any invisible capes? I can sense someone’s power.”

Kid Win’s response was to tap a button on the wall. “Console, this is Kid Win in the elevator to Wards HQ. Bouquet suggests possible presence of a Stranger. Please advise.”

A hidden speaker activated with a brief crackle of static. < _Received, Kid Win. Wait one. >_

The nebulous smell intensified for a second, then there was a brief wait before the voice returned. _< Scan is triply negative for Strangers, Kid Win. Identities are confirmed for both you and Bouquet, and she is verified as the original. Please clarify the original cause for suspicion.>_

Kid Win nodded to Charlotte, so she answered. “I smell a power that isn’t mine or Kid Win’s. It’s not one I recognize, and I don’t see anyone else here so I guessed they might be invisible.”

_< Acknowledged. Can you identify the location of the power use?>_

Charlotte closed her eyes and focused on the sensations her power was feeding her. She reached out her hand, felt the sense of proximity change fractionally. A strange game of warmer-colder soon led her to stand in a spot just off from center of the elevator, then to crouch and tap the floor.

“Here? Sorry, maybe my power isn’t that reliable.”

“Looks pretty accurate to me,” said Kid Win. “Console, I can confirm that Bouquet identified the location of the elevator’s tinker components. Looks like a false alarm.”

_< Understood. Please stand by for independent verification. Doors will open in approximately 60 seconds.>_

Sixty seconds was either an overestimate or a lie to fool the hypothetical Stranger, because about five seconds later the elevator doors slid open to a wall of PRT agents in full kit. Four of them pushed their way inside, barely fitting through the doorway. Each had a hand on their neighbor’s shoulder; the two in the middle held their other hand up in the air, blocking the way if the mystery cape were flying or unusually acrobatic. The other two pressed their free hand against the wall as the group made their way through the elevator front to back, ensuring that no person-sized space was left uninvestigated. Charlotte shrieked a little as she was pushed bodily into one corner; Kid Win had already retreated to another.

“Contact team, Clear,” announced one of the agents. Still, they didn’t unlink from each other or back away from Charlotte.

A second voice spoke from the hallway a moment later. “Observation, clear.”

_< Remote monitoring, confirm clear,>_ said the person over the speaker. _< Stand down. Kid Win, you may proceed.>_

The PRT agents exited the elevator, allowing the doors to close behind them. Charlotte tried to get her breathing under control. Despite the clear differences, being shoved against the wall by a strange man had reminded her far too much of being manhandled by the Merchants and by Skitter’s mercenaries.

“So,” said Kid Win, breaking the silence, “your cape sense can detect tinker tech, and can distinguish individual capes from each other. That’s quite the Thinker ability to go with your Trump boost.”

Charlotte shook herself and focused on his words. “I guess so? I don’t really have anything to compare it to, but it’s saved my life a couple times already since…” Charlotte paused to count days, “since Sunday night.”

Kid Win’s shoulders slumped, and his voice became more subdued. “I’m sorry that happened to you. Thank you for your trust after we weren’t there to help.”

Charlotte wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Trust didn’t really enter into it. Charlotte had evaluated her options; going to the Protectorate was simply the best choice. Yes, the heroes had failed to save her from the Merchants, and before that from Leviathan, but as unfortunate as that was it had hardly been a surprise. They’d been failing to uproot the Empire for longer than Charlotte had been alive. She knew well enough that the Protectorate couldn’t be everywhere.

She decided to change the subject instead.

“The elevator is really tinker tech?”

Kid Win laughed, seemingly grateful for the shift in topic. “Yeah, it is… sort of. We tell the tours that it’s our tinker tech elevator, it looks really sleek, so they believe it. If they ask, the tour guides usually joke and say that it’s our tinker tech elevator because we use it to transport tinker tech. I hate that joke.

“In truth, the elevator itself is almost entirely mundane. Rondelle added in a scanning functionality for security back when she was a Ward here, must have been ten or eleven years ago, and it’s been a bit of a training project for all the tinkers in the Wards since then to try maintaining someone else’s tech. Most of us have added something to it, kind of like signing your name, so there’s a bunch of different scanning features now. Plus just a little inertial dampening to make the ride smoother—I think that bit was from Torr.”

“Okay, thanks for telling me,” said Charlotte. “Um, does it usually take this long? How deep are we going?”

“Oh! Oops.” Sheepishly, Kid Win reached out and pressed a button that lit up. The elevator started moving. “Sorry about that.”

Charlotte just shook her head. That little goof had helped to ease some of the tension she felt after raising the false alarm.

When the doors opened to let them out, Kid Win led her down a short hall to a white door, but paused and turned back.

“Are you going to mask up? There are domino masks there on the wall.”

“I don’t really see the point,” Charlotte said. “I’ll just be unmasking to the team in a minute anyway. No reason to put it on and make a big deal out of it.”

“All right. It’s your choice.” He opened the door, called out “She’s here!” and led her into a large room. Charlotte had seen it on middle school trips to the PRT building, and it looked nothing like she remembered. The windows that had separated tour groups from the Wards were standing empty, the glass gone from their frames. The big screen TV on the wall was missing, leaving behind empty mounting brackets. A spot for a computer station also stood empty, making the space look terribly bare.

Two couches had been turned to face one another across a coffee table, along with a few wooden chairs appropriated from the dining table that was now shoved against a far wall. A boy made out of silvery metal was sitting in one of those chairs going through a stack of paperwork, and he stood up when they came in.

“Welcome to the Wards, Bouquet. I’m Weld. It’s good to have you.”

“Don’t be so quick to roll out the welcome mat,” said Clockblocker, entering through a doorway that seemed to lead to a kitchenette. “Let’s hear what she has to say, first.”

“Miss Militia trusts her, and Watchdog approved her joining,” Weld argued. “I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt.”

Clockblocker snagged a chair and flipped it around so he could sit in it and rest his arms on the backrest. “That’s nice. I still want to hear it. So, new girl? What’s the story?”

“I’m not sure what you want me to say,” admitted Charlotte. She was more than a little flustered by the blatant antagonism. “My name’s Charlotte Raimi. I grew up here in Brockton Bay. The PRT have categorized me as a Thinker/Trump, and I just joined the Wards.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Charlotte,” said Weld with reassuring smile. “It’s a good show of trust to introduce yourself that way. I don’t have a separate civilian persona, so just call me Weld regardless. Unfortunately, the others were instructed not to reveal their identities to you.”

“Why?”

“We’re hoping you could clear that up, actually,” said Kid Win, flopping back onto one of the couches. “It was something about you sharing what you learn with your clones, which I’ve got to say doesn’t inspire much confidence. We’ve had a known spy on the team for a couple weeks now, and none of us are excited about going through that again.”

“Oh. I see. Yes, I can explain that. Probably better to do it with everybody, though. Should we wait for the rest of the team?”

“No,” said Clockblocker. “They can ask their own questions later. I hope it’s a good explanation, Charlotte, because tensions are pretty high right now about spies and about clones. Stick them together, and I for one stop feeling patient and forgiving.”

Weld frowned at that, but he didn’t voice any disagreement.

“Alright,” said Charlotte. She moved to the empty couch and sat in it, composing her thoughts while the three Wards rearranged to face her.

“I was cloned by Echidna. Not just once, but a bunch of times. I don’t know how many copies of me are out there. There are five in this building, and more somewhere in the city. However many there are now, there’s at least six fewer than there were, since I know of six that were killed. I know that, because I lived through their deaths in my dreams. Somehow my dreams have been invaded by the memories of my clones. When I sleep I see some of the things that they have done or experienced, and that connection goes both ways. I didn’t anticipate this, but it makes sense the Protectorate wouldn’t want you to share your identities with me, because there’s a decent chance that one or even all of my clones could gain that information through this weird memory sharing we have. At least one of them is likely to be a problem, since she went and joined the Empire.” Charlotte couldn’t keep her voice from breaking on that last revelation. It still hurt _so much_ to think that a version of her had done that.

“Oh,” said Kid Win. “I’m sorry. That must really suck.”

“Yeah, it does. It really does.”

“Sure, sounds rough,” interrupted Clockblocker. “But if that’s true then why are they even letting you join the Wards? If our identities are in danger, so is everything else we do. Patrol routes, M-S passwords, everything. It’s just as bad as having a spy on the team. Even if you’re not actively betraying us, you’re still just as compromised.”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s just to help me out. My only other choice was to join Skitter or Faultline, since they found me first.”

“Dammit!” Clockblocker threw his hands in the air. “The Undersiders got to you, too? As if we didn’t have enough to worry about already.”

Noticing her confused look, Weld explained. “Two weeks ago the Undersiders kidnapped Shadow Stalker. Regent took control and puppeted her body to infiltrate this base and steal data. He then forced her to act aggressively to her family, email compromising personal information to multiple people, and stage a suicide attempt. She’s been transferred away from the city, but if the Undersiders are willing to cross that many lines there’s no reason to think they won’t do it again.”

“That’s horrifying!”

“Let me guess,” said Clockblocker, “they seemed pretty nice to you. You can’t imagine they would do something like that.”

“No.” Charlotte shook her head. “I was scared out of my mind pretty much the whole time I was with them. I was pretty well convinced they were going to kill me or worse for finding out their identities.”

“You know who they are?” asked Kid Win. “Did you tell the PRT?”

“And invite them to take revenge on my family? I’m not going to do that. I did relay what Skitter told me about them and the Travelers being employed by Coil all along. If that’s true, maybe they’ll tone things down now that Coil’s dead?”

“We can hope, I guess,” said Clockblocker. “Not that I’ll believe anything Skitter or Tattletale told you.”

“The important part,” cut in Weld, “is that we have Thinker confirmation that Bouquet here isn’t mastered by Regent, and she isn’t joining under false pretenses like Chariot. There may be obstacles to really trusting her with sensitive information, but we can still welcome her and trust who she is. You’re one of us now, Charlotte.”

“Thanks. I’m working with some PRT analysts to figure out the dream thing, so I’ll tell you as soon as we learn more.”

“Fine. Sorry I was a bit of a jerk,” said Clockblocker. “Between Stalker, Chariot, and Miss Malicious, it’s been bad enough that I almost didn’t notice that the Slaughterhouse were in town.”

“Miss Malicious?” Charlotte asked.

“Evil Echidna clone, tried to kill us. Someday it will be a good story.”

“Hey, nobody died. It’s already a good story,” said Kid Win. “Here, let me grab some snacks and we’ll fill you in.” He jumped up and jogged to the kitchenette.

“Don’t waste anything good on me,” said Charlotte. “Turns out my power overwrote my sense of taste and smell, so it’s hard for me to enjoy food now.”

“Wait, really?” asked Weld in a disturbingly perky voice. “Me too! Abs of steel, but no taste buds. I’ve been trying to experiment with super spicy food or interesting textures. I’ll bring out my stash. You’ll need to let me pull out anything that’s actually toxic, since you’re still organic and all, but anything else you are more than welcome to try.” He jumped up and headed back towards the living area.

“Thanks, I think,” said Charlotte to his back. What had she gotten herself into? She turned to Clockblocker, the only one still in the room. “So, where are the other Wards?”

“Not sure I should say, but I guess we’re not worrying about that now. Vista and Chariot are in the infirmary, courtesy of Miss Malicious. She’s got cracked ribs, he’s got a hole shot through each foot. Oh, plus he’s under arrest. Haven’t seen Glory Girl for a few days; I think she’s home with her family.”

“Glory Girl? I thought she was with New Wave.”

“Yeah, that was until Leviathan killed half of them. New Wave is done. Glory Girl’s been transitioning to the Wards since the attack, just hadn’t made it official with a public announcement yet. And Flechette is in the building somewhere, talking to Parian. Turns out they’re friends or something. We haven’t gotten the briefing yet, but Dolltown got caught up in Crawler’s rampage yesterday. The PRT gave Parian and some others a place to stay.”

“Oh.” Charlotte shuddered. “I think I remembered part of that fight in my dreams last night.”

“Really?” asked Kid Win, dropping bags of chips on the table. “Well, after you hear about Miss Malicious, maybe you can tell us some of what you saw.”

The next hour was spent getting to know the other Wards, or at least their cape personas. It was frequently awkward and not really relaxing at all, but it was still nice to get to meet them and lay the groundwork for being teammates.

Charlotte was just thinking that it might be time to leave and go find out what had come of her mom’s negotiations, and was trying to think of a way to gracefully excuse herself when a sudden alarm almost deafened her. It was a strident ringing that fortunately cut itself off after about ten seconds. Charlotte had clamped her hands over her ears; the others had leapt to their feet and turned to stare at a speaker inset into the ceiling. The announcement that followed was terse and to the point:

_< Full alert. Citywide power effect in progress, suspected to be a bioagent released by Bonesaw. CBRN measures recommended if possible. Stand by for more.>_


	49. Terror 6.3

Riley peered at the little organ she’d implanted in the base of the Mimi’s lung, watching how it blackened as the necrotizing enzymes reached it. Before long the lining deteriorated enough to release the little bladder’s contents. The material neutralized some of the enzymes, but not nearly with the efficacy she’d tried to achieve. She’d need at least two more iterations before she could even think of putting it into herself.

“Sorry, Mimi,” she said, “just a bit longer.”

Mimi didn’t say anything, of course. Not only had Riley made sure to paralyze her and disable her power so she wouldn’t make a mess of things, both of her lungs had collapsed when Crawler’s caustic spit ate through her ribcage. Fortunately, the fluid Riley had injected would oxygenate her brain for long enough that breathing was superfluous.

“Aren’t you done yet?” asked Jack.

“Sorry, Uncle Jack. Ned’s newest ‘acid’ is a lot more potent than I gave it credit for. I’ve been able to replicate it no problem, but I can’t install a gland to make it until I figure out how to keep it from eating through into my peritoneum. I keep some important stuff in there.”

“Well, close yourself up in the meantime. You need to look presentable when our guest arrives. You did set the traps, right?”

“Yes, Jack,” she said, but he was already gone. Maybe Riley had been a bit overeager to start working on herself, and she probably should have waited to open her abdomen until she had the organ ready to implant, but Ned’s newest substance was just so _fascinating,_ she felt like she couldn’t wait! It could eat through nearly anything, of course. That wasn’t anything new. The important part was that most of its breakdown products were their own variety of caustic. Soft tissue was rendered into a cocktail of myo- and neuro-toxins, and Mimi’s affected bones had slowly foamed up into abrasive nanoparticles in an alkaline slurry. This enzyme cocktail wasn’t just potent, it was fun and creative in all the best ways.

“Okay, Mimi,” she said, as she excised some more of the toxi-fied flesh. “I’m just going to freshen up a bit, then I’ll be back to finish up. Five more minutes of study and I’ll have learned what I need. Don’t worry, I’ll have you all fixed up in no time. I’ve got plenty of ideas for improvements, too. You’ll need new arms anyway, so why not put flamethrowers in them? Just little ones, of course, to get you started.”

“Riley, don’t dawdle!” called Jack.

“Okay, finishing up now.” Good girls listened, so she’d have to do what he said. Plus he was right: appearances _were_ important.

Then again, she only had to _look_ presentable. As long as things didn’t show on the surface, she could keep on tinkering. She folded the skin down on her belly so that there was still a hand-sized gap at the bottom before applying the skin sealant to it. She attached a short prosthetic claw to her elbow, plugging it into the neural shunt there before feeding it in through the hole. Putting her apron on over the top hid everything from view very nicely. As long as she kept her arm close to her side, she’d be fine!

“Alright, I’m decent!” she called to him. “Can I keep working while we wait?”

“Can you?”

“I mean _may_ I keep working?”

“Yes you may, after you double check the traps. Remember, incapacitating but not lethal. I’ll be upset if I don’t get a chance to talk to our guest.”

“Of course, Uncle Jack.” Riley quickly skipped out into the back yard to examine the vines growing along the fence of the house they’d borrowed. She wasn’t sure why Jack was so certain his clone was on the way, but she’d do what he said. He hadn’t talked about anything but his clone for the past few days, ever since coming back from meeting Noelle.

Riley was still kind of upset that Jack hadn’t taken her along. She couldn’t wait to see that amazing body again. It had given her so many ideas of art she could make, and she was sure that Jack would like all of them. She really hoped Noelle passed the tests and joined their family.

The vine was just right, ready to ensnare anyone who brushed against it, and dosed correctly to paralyze an adult man of Jack’s size. She moved around to the side windows. The toad there was well camouflaged. On to the front door.

While she walked, Riley used her extra claw to tinker on the addition she’d made to her duodenum. It wasn’t art, which meant she couldn’t put it in other people; Jack wasn’t fond of low-brow humor, and he’d be disappointed in her. But it was just such a good idea! Upgrade normal colon bacteria to produce nitrous oxide, along with a long-lasting euphoric. Then keep them primed to release their products and with the right stimulus what did you get? Inherently funny flatulence!

Well, farts were funny regardless, but now hers could be the funniest ever, because they could force people to laugh at them even if those people were feeling scared or serious. People didn’t laugh enough around Riley, but now she had the best possible way to make sure they liked her jokes. If she farted enough, they might even die of laughter! Jack might approve of that if it wasn’t linked to farting, but Riley didn’t want to adapt it for other delivery modes. As long as she only did it when Jack was busy elsewhere, he’d never know her artistic sense was so unrefined.

She stopped tinkering on herself when she saw the trap at the front door. It was good she’d checked it, because it definitely needed to be adjusted. This compound had the potential to become lethal outside of a very small dosage window. Better safe than sorry—she wouldn’t want to ruin Jack’s meeting. She carefully disconnected the trigger that would release the poison sacs from the mushrooms, then rubbed the toad’s belly to adjust its friend-or-foe sensing to be more permissive.

Back inside, Mimi wasn’t doing great. Only a few more inches before she ran out of torso, and then Riley wouldn’t be able to study Ned’s venom without risking permanent damage.

“Sorry I took so long. Just hold still. You’re doing fine.”

Mimi’s eyes darted around, but she didn’t move otherwise, allowing Riley to get right to work. She got a good design for the lining of the venom gland and started installing it behind her ribs. It was tricky working with the apron in the way and reaching through the smaller hole, but she managed it without any mistakes. She’d just finished hooking everything up when the front door swung open and Jack walked in holding a straight razor. Not Uncle Jack, of course—his clone.

That’s not how it was supposed to happen. Her traps should have caught him. She popped the knuckles on her left hand open to send out an aerosol, but hesitated. Did this Jack have any of the immunities she’d given the original? What if she killed him with too high a dose, and Uncle Jack didn’t get to have the conversation he’d been looking forward to. That wouldn’t do. Maybe she should just take a more direct approach? She sent a command to the two spider bots hiding by the door frame to lunge at his ankles.

Jack was quick. A flick of the wrist sliced off three legs from the first bot then gouged a hole in its center, killing it. At the same time, he lifted his left foot and stomped down on the second bot, crushing just the right spot to disable it. He knew everything the real Jack knew, including the weaknesses in her tech.

“That is very shoddy workmanship,” he said. “Excuse me. _Shitty_ workmanship.”

Riley was so shocked at the deliberate swear that she didn’t move in time to block Jack’s next flick of his razor, and a gash sliced right through her secondary jaw muscles on the right side.

“Now, now, Jacob” came Jack’s voice—the real Jack—as he walked into the room. “Let’s keep things civilized. I’ve been looking forward to having some intelligent conversation for once.”

“I’m sure you have,” answered his clone, “but how am I supposed to find the same? I have nothing to gain from speaking with a two-bit hack.”

Riley straightened up and smoothed out her apron, surreptitiously detaching the claw from her elbow. Jack had been very clear that she wasn’t to interrupt this meeting. He’d also told her to be presentable, so she pressed the skin closed around the cut in her cheek, dispensing a little sealant from a fingertip. She’d mend and reattach the muscle later.

“A hack, you say? Surely that’s not a word that can apply to the most feared man in the nation.”

“An _uninspired_ hack. You repeat the same sad charade over and over. You say you want to find out what makes people tick, but people are the same everywhere you go. You haven’t had an original thought in two decades.”

Jack sighed. “Ah, yes, the curse of a true performer. The show loses its novelty for those involved in the production. But look at its effect on the audience! For them it is always new and fresh.”

“That’s a pretty lie to tell yourself. The truth is you are afraid.”

“I’m so sorry, Jacob. I do believe the cloning process scrambled your brain. I don’t recall being afraid once since King took me in.”

Before the clone could respond, a knife flashed in Jack’s hand. It was mirrored by the clone’s razor, and slices appeared in each’s clothing and skin. However, the clone lacked the subdermal mesh Riley had installed in Uncle Jack, so the tendons in his knees were severed and he fell backwards onto the floor. A puncture in his gut made him grunt with each breath.

Jack, unaffected, stepped forward. “Do tell, what is it that you think I’m afraid of?”

“You are afraid to succeed. You pull your punches, attack small targets. You refuse to truly make a difference.”

Jack laughed. “And to think I expected intelligence from you. I’ve built the most infamous, most long-lasting group of capes in the world. Do you remember that insane essay claiming the ‘S’ in ‘S-class threat’ was derived from the Slaughterhouse name? More importantly, I’ve peeled back the veneer of civilization that society clings to and exposed the rot underneath. For every five people I’ve killed outright, I’ve turned another one into a murderer, broken down their lies of decency and morality.” He beckoned Riley over, so she moved beside him. He put an arm around her shoulder. “What of Bonesaw and her art? None of it would exist without me. What is success, if not this?”

“You could have done so much more. You could have pushed the world into the apocalypse you thought it was in before you left that bunker. But no, you are afraid of going that far, of truly throwing away this brave new world you found. You are so focused on your place in it: on being remembered, on making a name for yourself.”

“Ah, I see what this is. You’ve heard the little prophecy that’s running around that I’m going to end the world in two years. You think that the delay means I haven’t been applying myself. Well, ending the world isn’t the point. The version I’ve gleaned from several upstanding PRT officers says that even without me everything will end less than twenty years from now. Supposedly I am going to meet someone and convince them to do the deed sooner. And _that_ is something to look forward to.”

Jack squeezed Riley’s shoulder. She glanced at him, but he wasn’t trying to send her a message or instruct her to do something; he was just caught up in the excitement of his idea.

The clone coughed, clutching his stomach. “Such delusions of grandeur. A pitiful imitator like you doesn’t deserve the credit for delivering the death blow to a dying planet.”

“Fifty billion years of collective life shaved off at the end is nothing to scoff at. It does point to a particularly important keystone I’ll get to knock loose.”

“Actually, the prediction was conditional. You only end the world if you leave Brockton Bay alive.”

The clone slashed out with his hand, now clutching a fist full of glass shards. Jack was already moving, though, shoving Riley in front of him to take the blow. Lacerations blossomed across her skin, most doing hardly anything through her protections. Her apron was shredded, though, and the claw she’d detached earlier was knocked even deeper into her abdomen.

Jack made a simple cut in the air, opening the clone’s throat.

“Such a waste,” he said.

But the clone wasn’t fully dead yet. With the last of his dying strength he jabbed his razor forward to stab directly through the open hole in Riley’s stomach, bypassing all of her dermal armor. The projected blade punctured the supplementary adrenal glands nestled against her spine, causing them to dump their accumulated hormone reservoirs. The sudden influx of stimulants, modified adrenaline, and other compounds was horribly imbalanced and immediately tripped her anti-Master defenses. Her vision clouded red, and a twinge in her throat indicated that her berserker mode was about to activate.

Well, that wouldn’t do at all. She clenched her jaw in the required override sequence, only to realize that the necessary muscles were still severed from the clone’s opening attack. He’d planned this from the start!

Riley tried to step away from Jack, tried to voice a warning, but it was too late. Body no longer under her conscious control, her legs propelled her towards the nearest potential threat. Long blades of reinforced bone sprang out of her arms, driven by spring-like muscles with enough power to skewer a low level brute. Jack slipped aside from the blow, diverting one away at an angle while severing Riley’s other wrist with a single powerful swing.

He couldn’t do anything to stop her ribs splaying open and driving their sharpened tips into his gut. She’d already made him immune to most of the agents they injected, but not all of them. He certainly wasn’t protected from the gland she’d just installed to replicate Ned’s newest venom. Its payload dispensed directly into his liver, spreading from there, and Riley was helpless to stop it. Just like with Mom.

Dismissing Jack as a further threat, her berserker program swung her head around to scan the rest of the room. The clone was dead. Mimi was barely more than a head. The other corpses and near-corpses were equally non-threatening.

The coloring in her vision shifted from red to yellow to indicate the cooldown timer had started. She just had to wait twenty seconds for it to disengage, and she’d be free to save Jack. She knew she could do it, even if some of the toxins had reached his brain. She had the antidotes and neutralizing compounds inside her already, it was just a matter of getting them to the right places.

Ten more seconds.

Jack started chuckling.

Five.

The chuckle grew into something more, became a hearty laugh. This new motion stopped the cooldown, returning Riley’s vision to red. Her body lunged, remaining arm-blade outstretched. Jack was laughing so hard that he was only able to redirect it to pierce his lung instead of his heart. In dismay, Riley realized that at some point her duodenum had ripped open, allowing the bacteria to outgas all the euphoric they contained.

Jack collapsed face first onto the ground, still laughing as his flesh continued to dissolve.

A flicker of black and white at the corner of her vision had her lashing out again, and the Siberian caught her. Sibby scooped her up, overriding the puny strength of Riley’s modified flesh with her own immutability.

As Riley was carried away from the house, away from Brockton Bay, she hardly even noticed the activation of her much-anticipated agnosia prion. The red mist barely registered through the red haze already covering her world, and her art didn’t mean much any more, without Uncle Jack or the rest of her family to appreciate it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are aftereffects to deal with still, but the Slaughterhouse Nine have now officially vacated Brockton Bay. Let’s see how they did!
> 
> S9 Members  
> • Shatterbird: Killed by Miss Militia, assisted by Skitter  
> • Cherish: Killed by Imp  
> • Mannequin: Killed by Panacea  
> • Crawler (original plus 3 Echidna clones): Two clones killed by other Crawlers. Original and remaining clone displaced to alternate Earth by Eraser (a.k.a Scrub in canon), assisted by Bouquet(clone) and Parian.  
> • Burnscar: Killed by Regent/Crawler/Bonesaw  
> • Jack Slash (original plus 1 Echidna clone): killed by each other, using Bonesaw as a weapon.  
> • Bonesaw: survives, escapes Brockton Bay  
> • Siberian: survives, escapes Brockton Bay, but her nature as a projection is widely revealed.
> 
> Overall survival score: 2 out of 8
> 
> Recruitment score: 0 (We haven’t seen the outcome for all the nominees yet, but none of them have joined the group.)
> 
> Inflicted Casualties: Lots, but substantially fewer than in canon. Of particular note:  
> • Most of the city had more warning and endured Shatterbird’s song with fewer deaths and injuries. (Skitter’s territory being the exception, since she wasn’t close enough to personally warn them this time.)  
> • The Merchants didn’t hold a second party for the Nine to crash, so they weren’t massacred.  
> • There was no bombing run, using either mundane or tinker munitions.  
> • A few capes who survived in canon did die here, including Tattletale*, Victor, Stormtiger, and Purity. (Squealer and Night also died on screen, but not at the hands of the S9.)
> 
> *death in this case was impermanent.


	50. Terror 6.4

Marissa hissed in pain as Jess tugged the bandage tight around her chest. Her ribs still hurt from the fight with Hack Job, enough that it was hard to breathe deeply, or sometimes even normally.

Jess maneuvered awkwardly behind her on the bed, dragging her legs along as she shuffled to reach the button-up shirt Mars had chosen, since she couldn’t wear anything that required lifting her arms over her head. Jess slid the sleeves over Marissa’s hands and helped pull it up to her shoulders. Marissa didn’t have to reach back very far, but it was enough of a strain to bring tears to her eyes.

“Thanks, Jess,” she gasped after everything was secure.

“I’m glad to be on the other side of this, for once,” Jess said, working at the buttons. “Usually I’m the invalid.” There was some bitterness in her voice, but mostly kindness. It was true, too. Honestly, accepting help like this was a lot easier when Marissa remembered having been Jess’s legs or hands so often in the past.

“I guess you’ll argue with me if I say I feel like a burden.”

“Don’t you dare. I’d take it as a personal offense. Don’t worry, we’ll stick together, get you healed….” Jess trailed off when Marissa winced. “Sorry, I didn’t realize until I said it.”

Marissa just nodded. Echoes of Francis’ mantra echoed through her memories. _Keep the team together. Heal Noelle. Get home._

“It’s different, though,” said Jess, bulling through the awkwardness. “This time we don’t need a miracle, just a doctor.”

“Yeah. You’re right—this is just my ribs. Not like Leviathan breaking half the bones in my body, and nothing like… that.”

Jess pushed herself to the edge of the mattress and carefully lowered herself into her chair. Once her legs were arranged on the footrests, she spun around and faced Marissa.

“I’m sorry. I wish it were different.”

“I know. Thank you for getting me out. Being inside her was…” Marissa shuddered. “I just hate leaving her like this. I promised her I would stop her if she lost control. She’s my best friend. I _promised_ her, Jess.”

“Could you do it? Right now, if we found her, could you end her?”

Marissa just looked away.

“Then why beat yourself up about this? Noelle would want us to save ourselves, wouldn’t she? Remember that time in the prequalifiers on the Minnesota State servers, when she set herself up to kite the other team into Cody’s trap? That was based on individual scores, and she was going to sacrifice her placement to get the rest of us into the next round. She only made it out because the enemy sniper took out their own tank.”

Marissa sniffed. “Yes. But this isn’t Ransack.”

“No, but it’s still Noelle. Maybe she’ll pull out another crazy win.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“I want to,” said Jess. “But more than that, I don’t want any more of us to end up like Chris or like Cody. The PRT know we broke out of the quarantine at Madison. We can’t stick around and let them decide to fix that.”

“You’re right.” Marissa sighed. She just had to accept that she’d failed her friend, and that there was nothing left for her in this shattered ruin of a city.

“At least we still have each other, right?”

Marissa offered a sad smile, which turned into a grimace when she tried to stand from the bed. “Ow.”

“Come on. Let’s eat, then we can leave as soon as Luke gets back.”

Jess turned her chair and led the way out of the bedroom. As things were, she was a lot faster than Marissa. Luke’s base was actually a fairly nice duplex home with lots of natural light before all the windows blew out from Shatterbird’s attack. Now it was dim, lit by lanterns spaced around the combined living/dining area. The couch raised up on cinderblocks to provide extra seating at the kitchen table. It was plush and comfortable, but not for someone with injured ribs; Marissa chose to sit in a more supportive wooden chair.

Oliver was hunched over the kitchen counter plating out spaghetti. It was basic, but it was better than most of the city had right now. He’d even managed to get some garlic toast together as a side.

“Have we heard anything from Luke?” Marissa asked.

Oliver nodded. “He radioed in about ten minutes ago. He found the extra gas he was looking for, and should be back any time.”

Oliver brought the food over, and Jess wheeled herself up to the table. The three of them ate slowly, not talking much. There wasn’t really anything to say. They all knew that this was the end, that the PRT had been encountering clones all over the city and would soon track down Noelle. With Crawler defeated and the Siberian’s weakness discovered, Noelle was fast becoming the biggest threat in the area.

It didn’t _have_ to be the end. The rest of the Travelers could help her, but only if they stopped holding back, and only until the Protectorate escalated to the same measures they’d planned against the Slaughterhouse capes. And frankly, if Marissa and Luke stopped holding back they’d have the body count to deserve it. If they took that path, there were only losing battles left. Not even pyrrhic victories, just annihilating fire. Leaving Francis and Noelle behind was a loss, but at least they weren’t losing everything.

Oliver finished first and moved back into the kitchen to start rinsing things off. Marissa almost told him not to bother. They weren’t coming back, so there was no point to cleaning up. But they were leaving behind enough of a mess that Marissa understood the need to reduce that mess even a little bit, even in such an inconsequential gesture as washing a plate. Besides, Oliver had quietly handled the non-cape, day-to-day aspects of the team’s life that it was habit to him now to pick up the slack when the rest of them were focused on other things. She wouldn’t take that familiarity away from him.

A sudden shout jarred her from her thoughts. Oliver had jumped back from the sink, dropping dishes to the floor. The stream of water from the faucet had turned a brilliant red, and crimson steam was billowing into the air.

“Bonesaw,” breathed Jess, and Marissa remembered the warning from the Undersiders even as the cloud of red mist enveloped her and filled the room. Belatedly she tried to hold her breath, but it was too late. It’d already gotten in her mouth her lungs—if that was even necessary for it to affect her. For all she knew it was meant to be absorbed through her skin.

This was it. They were all going to die to some gruesome plague. Marissa turned to Jess to say goodbye at least, but found a stranger in her place.

“Mars?” asked the stranger. She had a shaky alto voice, and she was sitting in Jess’ wheelchair. She had a round face and auburn hair, and Marissa didn’t recognize her at all.

“Is, is that you, Jess?”

“Yes, it’s me. Do I look different? You look different. I was watching you and I’m not sure what changed, but you don’t look like _you_ anymore.”

Marissa glanced into the kitchen. Everything was tinted red in the mist, but it wasn’t hard to make out the good looking guy standing there in fear. She didn’t recognize him, but that wasn’t anything new. Oliver often looked different than the last time she’d seen him, though never so suddenly.

“Is that what this does?” he asked. His voice was different, too. “It just changes how we look? I don’t feel sick.”

“Not likely,” said Marissa. “Bonesaw would go for something much more grotesque. Maybe it’s progressive, though, and hasn’t had time to really take effect.”

“I don’t know,” said Jess. “I’m watching closely, and I don’t see anything else changing on you, Mars.”

Marissa looked back at Jess and narrowed her eyes. She didn’t recognize her—not only did she not look like Jess, she didn’t look like the same stranger who’d been sitting in that chair seconds earlier. Marissa carefully examined this new stranger’s face: auburn hair, round face, light dusting of freckles across the forehead. All the same features, and yet unrecognizable.

“That’s not what it’s doing,” Marissa said. “It’s a Stranger effect. Or brain damage, I guess.”

Jess twisted around and retrieved the purse hanging off the back of her chair. Pulling out a compact, she stared at herself in the mirror.

“I think you’re right,” she said, handing it across the table.

Marissa took it, examining the face she saw. It wasn’t hers. She didn’t know the person staring back at her. However, when she focused on any single feature she could associate it with her memories of doing up her blonde hair, or using makeup to conceal that zit on her nose, or disliking the way her eyes were a little too close together and accentuated her narrow face. Yes, this was the same face she’d worn up to this point. Bonesaw had just taken away the element that made it feel _hers_.

“What do we do?” asked Oliver.

“I don’t know. Maybe we can wait and hope Panacea comes up with a cure. As long as we don’t go in costume, we should be able to get the cure and get away before they try to quarantine us.”

“If it’s a Stranger effect, this could even help us to escape,” said Jess. “Maybe we don’t want the cure. Nobody will recognize us, and we can keep moving. We can work around this, find passwords or other ways to confirm each other’s identities.”

“But if it’s brain damage? It will be hard to interact with an employer or anyone else. And what if it’s progressive? Who knows what we’ll lose next.”

“And maybe there is no cure,” said Oliver dejectedly. It was still an effort to think of him as Oliver, despite knowing intellectually that he was. There was no feeling of rightness when she connected her mental image of Oliver to this person in front of her, and it was starting to make her feel paranoid. “Panacea can’t do brains, so if it’s brain damage we’re screwed,” Oliver continued. “Same with a Stranger effect. She can’t turn off powers or fix monster capes either. We looked into that for Noelle.”

“I say we leave like we planned,” said Marissa. “If the Slaughterhouse Nine are releasing plagues, there’s no reason to expect things will get better instead of worse. We’ll get out of the city, find somewhere safe, then if there is a cure at some point we can come back to get it.”

Before the others could agree or voice another option, the front door slammed open and a broad shouldered man in jeans and a t-shirt ran in.

“Did you guys see what’s going on outside? We need to get out of …” his shout trailed off, turned angry. “Who are you? What are you doing in my house?”

“It’s us, Luke,” said Jess, pointing at each of them. “Mars, Oliver, and Jess. I know we look different, but—”

“Clones! What have you done with the real ones? Did Noelle eat them?”

“No, it’s really us! Just listen.”

“You must think I’m an idiot.” Luke spun around, looking in all directions. “Is Krouse here? Is that how he got you all to Noelle to be cloned?”

“Please calm down,” said Marissa. “We’re not clones, we’re not attacking you or trying to trick you. Here. Look in this mirror and you’ll see what we mean.”

Luke reached out and took the compact she offered him, but he didn’t flip it open. Instead, it vanished from his hand and the familiar supersonic crack of his power was followed by a cry of pain from Oliver.

“Nice try with the distraction. I saw you sneaking up on me.”

“I wasn’t sneaking,” Oliver bit out, clutching his shattered arm. “I was just walking to the table!”

“Please, Luke, stop this! We’re your team!” pled Jess.

Luke paced forward and reached out to touch Jess’ chair. It shot out from underneath her, smashing through the wall into the bathroom, and the two walls beyond that. Red mist swirled in the wake of its passage. Jess herself fell to the floor, landing hard several feet from where she’d been.

Luke turned to Marissa, grabbing a fork off the table. “I’ll give you one chance. Where is the real Sundancer?”

“I’m me, Luke! This cloud is Bonesaw’s plague messing with our brains. Don’t attack your own team. Don’t betray us. Don’t be like Krouse.”

Luke scowled. “I’m nothing like Krouse. And you are not Mars.”

“No, wait! Look, I’ll show you my power. If it’s the same, I’m not a clone, right?” Marissa started to manifest her sun, flickers of light dancing in the space between her hands.

“That’s what we used to think, but it’s not true, is it? The Chosen, the Pure, the Merchants, the PRT, _all_ of them have reported fighting identical clones.”

Marissa managed to summon her sun just in time to intercept the fork that Luke fired straight at her chest. It was vaporized, but its motion disrupted the sun enough that she lost her grip and the ball vanished.

Luke swiped a hand across the table, sending two plates and a napkin holder rocketing in her direction. Fortunately, even though the sun was gone he was still blinded by the light of it and couldn’t track her as she stumbled to her feet and pushed away from the table. She’d never had a problem looking at her sun, just like she’d never had a problem with its heat, but she knew it left spots in everyone else’s vision. She didn’t want to attack anyone with her power, but maybe she could use it to distract Luke, and to hide from him until he came to his senses.

She ducked into the bedroom, clutching her ribs and breathed heavily. She started to create another sun, peeking back through the doorway as she did so.

A man, Luke presumably, was walking toward a girl who appeared to be unconscious on the floor. Toward Jess. He grabbed a salt shaker from the table and brought it down over her heart. Before he could kill her, though, another man launched himself from the kitchen holding a big knife. Luke spun away, escaping with only a shallow cut. He slapped a hand on Oliver’s chest, and suddenly there was a person sized hole in the wall. Luke had done that before to Brutes and fliers, launching them away by their costumes. But Oliver wasn’t a brute. He couldn’t possibly have survived that.

Luke stepped over to the hole, as if to ensure that Oliver’s supposed clone hadn’t somehow developed a Brute’s durability. No, he was reaching inside the hole to the closet space on the other side, pulling out the belt of ammunition he used when in costume. Behind him, a strange figure faded into being. It was very wide, with four low-slung arms and was covered in purple fur. It scooped up Jess from the floor, cradling her close to its body. Luke heard the noise of that and twisted around. He kicked out with a leg to touch the table, which shattered against Genesis’ construct. It stumbled with the force, but appeared to be able to tank blows like that.

But then Luke had ball bearings in his hands. He fired them one by one into the Genesis’ back. Some ricocheted off hidden armor plates, impacts softened by springy fur. Others landed with meaty thwacks, eliciting grunts or groans from Genesis.

Marissa wasn’t sure how long Jess could keep this up, but if Luke managed to destroy her projection she’d be dead for sure. She sent her sun out the doorway, making it hover slowly towards Luke. In response, a spray of projectiles impacted the wall she was hiding behind. Several broke through into the bedroom, though fortunately none actually hit her.

“Please, Luke. We aren’t your enemy.”

“You say while attacking me, while trying to impersonate my friends.”

There was no reasoning with him. They just had to escape. Marissa poured more energy into her sun, expanding it from the size of a volleyball up to two, three feet across. She interposed it between Luke and Jess, forcing him to back away from the heat of it.

More projectiles struck her wall, something clipping her arm and forcing a scream from her throat. Somehow she managed to keep the sun from dissipating, keep it where it could protect Jess. A moment later, Genesis was there at the bedroom door, blocking any further shots with her projected body.

“We need to get out,” said Genesis. Her voice in this form was a gravelly bass. “I won’t fit through the doors, though.”

Marissa nodded. She sent her sun toward Luke in a feint, then had it fly back and forth through the front wall of the house until there was a hole large enough for Genesis to pass through. She brought it back to sit between them and Luke. If he wanted to come at them, he wouldn’t be able to do it head on. She led the way through the burning room, Genesis following behind her to further shield both her and Jess’ real body.

Genesis stayed close enough that the fire and heat didn’t burn her, the temperature normalizing wherever Marissa walked. The flames didn’t go out, but they didn’t burn anything when she was nearby.

Marissa stumbled passing through the hole into the front yard, but one of Genesis’ arms caught her before she could fall. The pain in her ribs brought tears to her eyes, though. And once the tears started, they didn’t stop, even as Genesis carried her down the street, a bright sun trailing twenty feet behind them to guard their backs.

First Chris, then Cody. Noelle, of course, even if she wasn’t dead. Now Oliver, at Luke’s hand. All as the price for something she’d never wanted in the first place.

“I hate powers,” she finally sobbed, when they’d rounded a corner.

“I know,” rumbled Genesis. “Me too.”

Marissa didn’t know if all powers were like this, or if they were being specially tortured because of the Simurgh’s attention. She and all of her friends had gotten powers that taunted them with the worst parts of themselves or their past. Marissa had never been allowed to do anything small or by half measures. It had always been “go big or go home,” and home was less of an option now than ever before.

Francis had wanted to switch places with people, steal Cody’s spot on the team. Noelle’s self-inflicted hunger, Jess’ desire to escape her body, Cody’s fixation on correcting mistakes. Powers had made all those things worse.

Eventually, Genesis slowed to a stop. Marissa looked up. Three people stood in front of them, blocking the road. She didn’t recognize them, of course, but they were wearing masks so they were probably capes. That made sense—nobody else would confront a purple monster carrying two girls down the street, much less one with a blazing ball of fire following it. There’d been plenty of people out wandering through the red mist, but so far they had all kept a healthy distance.

“Sundancer and Genesis, I presume?” asked the tall woman in a welding mask. Strangely, though, she didn’t seem to be addressing Marissa and Jess but a teenage girl next to her with an orange scarf.

“Yes,” said the girl. “I recognize their scents from the Truce meeting. And they aren’t Mother’s either. I can tell when someone’s a clone.”

“Thank you, Bouquet.” The woman turned to them, then. “I know you can’t tell right now, but I am Faultline. I’d like to ask you some questions.”

Marissa shared a look with Genesis, who nodded.

“Alright,” she said. “Do you have somewhere safe we can stay?”


End file.
